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Scientific Battlegrounds in Diets
There's an interesting article currently carried by the NYTimes (free reg. yada yada) that talks about the world of dieting, National Institutes of Health, Atkins as well as low-carb vs low-fat. The interesting thing, from a scientific perspective, is the sheer lack of study - and the reticence from the scientific community to question the party line.
Both camps have conducted numerous studies, but the only ones that have produced long term results are the low-carb diets and diets that include exercise as the key component.
Low fat diets have repeatedly been shown to be the leading factor leading to the 'yoyo effect'. The diet works against the body's metabolism, suspressing it which leads to a lower metabolic rate which is exactly the opposite of what is needed for longterm weight reduction.
I have been pwned because my
Everything in moderation is the key to health. Eating 50% of your diet from rutabegas isn't going to do your health any more favors than eating 50% beef. Is that so hard to understand? I guess we need to get a buncha scientists to prove that in fact, you are alive and breathing. Sheesh
On the theme of dieting, did anyone else see the hot dog eating contest this past fourth of july? The skinny Japanese dude schooled the Americans, downing 50.5 hot dogs AND buns in 12 minutes. The American guys outweighed him by at least 200 pounds, but this dude could pound those dogs down. It has something to do with the absence of layers of fat, which allows the stomach to expand more. Something to think about
How can a study claim to be scientific without conducting any actual research. The scientific process is dependent on research and conducting studies. Even theoretical physics is just that--theoretical--until somebody determines something based on the theory that is experimentally verified. If these people claim to have anything more than an abstract social theory, they are fools. Science without facts is not science.
There's no sig like SIGSEG
Here is the direct link to the article via the NYTimes.com Registration Generator.
This was on plastic. I recommend some people steal some posts from there for some ez-modpoints.
personally i'm a little overweight have been interested in the idea the eating bacon w/ butter as a main food could make me loose weight, the down side a lot of people on the adkins diet have dangerously high cholesterol counts. Then again, all research in the field seems to be highly biased, the only nugget of consistent truth i can find is eating less works, typically on a high far or low fat diet you'll end up consuming less calories, which seems to always work.
There was something about a low calorie diet on Scientific Frontiers a while back, you can view it here if you like
-Jon
this is my sig.
I cannot understand...
you'd better visit my site it's fun:)
In general, these "scientific battleground" stories are more hype than reality.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
(NYT slashdotted.)
I don't understand why a magic diet pill is so hard. Take tissue from a hundred fat people, and a hundred naturally skinney people, combine them, run them thru a centrifuge, and find out what the *difference* is by looking at or studying the bands. Then inject (or intake) the difference as a diet solution.
Skinney people (who don't crave food) are skinney without side-effects, so whats the hard problem here?
This discipline crap is a pain in the ass. A bunch of tedious excercise and cardboard-tasting "diet" food just to lose 3 pounds? Puuulease.
Besides, imagine how much more pretty babes would be in the world to look at if there was an easy solution.
Science made us fat, so science should fix it!
Whats the hold up!
Table-ized A.I.
However, many people's expectations are way out of whack with reality. For success:
1) Embark on a cardio training program. Try to run at least 1 mile per day to start with, building up to 3-4.
2) Throw out the carbs- no more bread, donuts, sweets, deserts etc.
3) Lift weights (but not like a pussy) Do the big lifts- bench, deadlift and squat.
4) Eat lots of protein.
Expect to lose about 1lb per week. As you get leaner, expect the muscles to show through (if you had any in the first place).
The bottom line is most diets fail because of impossible expectations. You can lose 20 lbs. Just don't expect to do it in 3 weeks with no effort.
Besides being completely off topic, this has nothing to do with a BSD kernel vulnerability. How, exactly, a BSD kernel vulnerability would be very important to the linux community is behind me, other than issues of sympathy.
Videogames for the most part are about reward for effort and penalty for failure. If you do anything on that bias you might find yourself being less creative, and thus dropping the activity in that part of the brain, I'm an artist and an avid gamer this irreversible line is a bunch of hooey.
When was the last timne a clinical study aimed to prove something was bad or good failed at doing so.
There is evidence to prove both Democrats and Republicans are lying cocksuckers. Vote independently.
Is that when you break the human body's functions down to the simplest forms, you find that its all "energy"... You feed food into the body, and the body converts it to energy. Now this energy can be used as fat deposits or as the traditional term of energy which lets you run a long way or lift heavy monitors. If you eat N amount of energy but only use X amount ( N being more than X ) then Y is left to be stored for later. Its really a very simple equasion. burn more than you eat and ye shall store less fat No diet in the world is going to help you unless you remember that basic fact.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
(* combine them, run them thru a centrifuge, .... *)
I meant combine each of the groups of one-hundred into one "skinney" sample and one "fat" sample.
Actually, they would perhaps be done in isolation, and then electronically added, but this is just a conceptual suggestion.
Table-ized A.I.
As a person who was on the Atkins diet for about 2 months, and quickly (7-10 days) lost 20 pounds I can attest to that this diet WORKS. But there are serious drawbacks. You must drink prodigious amounts of water to risk kidney problems. Eating steak with butter is no fun without a great baked potato, or steak french fries. And forget double cheesburgers. Trying to eat the meat without the bread is a messy proposition, and again no french fries to go along with it. I haven't been on many diets, but this diet quickly got very old, even after being able to eat small amounts of carbs.
We had to destroy the sig to save the sig.
My way to trim the pounds: Still pumped from using the mouse
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
To lose weight you simply take in less calories than your maintnance.
If you need 2000 calories to support your 190lbs, you go down to 1900 calories, then 2 weeks later go down to 1800 and stay around there for about 4-5 months. Occassionally to keep your metabolism fast you do a 3000-4000 calorie day once a week.
The low carb thing is healthy but it wont make you lose weight for long because you cant stay in ketosis for 6 months or so which is about how long it will take to lose about 50lbs
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I particularly remember a comment that the most unhealthy diet in Europe was found in Scotland, where the only widely comsumed leafy vegetable was tobacco.
The evidence may not be completely air tight but this article makes a persuasive case. I read this article last night. I had been trying to shed some pounds for a while with little success, now I have a possible explanation.
From this morning I went cold turkey, in fact when I wake up tomorrow I am going to chuck the cereal and bagels in the trash can.
Things I 'll have to give up:-
Pasta - never liked it, except for macaroni and cheese.
Bread- I LOVE bread, especially white bread.
Cereal- I used to eat cereal religiously. No more!
Pizza - OUCH! no pain no gain...
Sugar rich substances ?? cakes, Coke etc. I have to check on this.
The good thing is that you can have a ton of meat and fatty foods, and of course vegetables and fruits.
On the plus side, this will freak my mom out a lot less than becoming a vegetarian or something...
The only reason all cover-ups appear to fail is that you never hear about the ones that succeed.
So how come there are so many fat people about?
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
Caveat: I work at Pennington Bimedical Research Center, and my boss, Dr. George Bray, was interviewed for but not quoted in the NYTimes article, I suspect because he argues for what he calls "the inevitability of calories." Some problems with the article:
1. It's lopsided journalism (surprised?). There's no *honest* attempt at balance, which is precisely what the author accuses the researchers of doing.
2. The acknowledgement of the validity of the alternative position is buried in the middle of the article on page 4: "Few experts now deny that the low-fat message is radically oversimplified." The author seems to return to it, but never really does.
3. Atkins's program, as with other low-carb programs, work well initially but are extremely difficult to maintain. (The same is true of low-fat diets, incidentally.) This is acknowledged by the research community.
4. Some of the substantiations, such as that claiming that one's body sees all carbohydrates as sugars (page 5), is imprecise.
5. An "Atkins diet without excess fat" (page 7) is a low-fat diet. Someone needs to get over himself.
6. This quote is especially choice: "...the public-health authorities may indeed have a problem on their hands. Once they took their leap of faith and settled on the low-fat dietary dogma 25 years ago, they left little room for contradictory evidence or a change of opinion, should such a change be necessary to keep up with the science" (page 7). It only seems like "contradictory evidence or a change of opinion" if you're outside the research community. This is one research community that is not monolithic.
Do more investigation before taking this article as gospel.
The only reason that `low fat' diets fail is because of a lack of personal willpower, and an absurd notion that one can turn ship overnight and change everything about themselves: If you grew up eating roast beef and butter soaked mashed potatoes, the idea that you'll switch to veggies and soy overnight is absolutely absurd. Yet that's the way that many people approach dieting (Countless sitcoms follow the story of "Jimmy got a warning from the doctor, so the wife now only feeds him spinach and oatmeal"). Anything that is approached with such immediacy is virtually always doomed to failure: The person at work who won't stop yapping about their new diet is virtually yelling out loud "I am going to fail". The guy who just started going to the gym every now and then, coupled with an improved awareness and self-control, and perhaps some good product choices (by making simple choices one can dramatically decrease your caloric intake).
The Atkins diet goes over well in North America because the standard North American diet just happens to be rich on fat, rich on protein, and short on carbs : Going on the Atkins diet is basically saying "Eat what you eat, just be cognizant of it". For "fatty", such a food awareness is a good approach because it's less likely to be perceived as "all or nothing": You haven't given up if you have a Big Mac or a steak. Yet at the same time there are countless very active, very healthy (probably in much better cardiac shape than the average Atkins diet fan) people living on zero saturated fat.
BTW: The saddest thing about the whole diet fad is that the lazy, gas pedal public perceives health as being merely about food. How far from the truth that is. Gaining some muscle mass not only makes you more capable of handling yourself, but it also raises your basal metabolic rate (muscles consume energy just to exist). If people just got off their sorry, lazy asses and DID SOMETHING their would be far less obesity among the sedentary population. I have no doubt that there are people who have hormone imbalances, but for every one of them there are about 4 who, between stuffing back a Big Mac and Super Monster Large Fries is crying about their poor genetics DAMNIT GET ME A BEER! Apart from the extreme outliers with physical handicaps, anyone who doesn't exercise at least 30 minutes every other day, and who eats with disregard, should realize that they are making their own bed.
I've had it fail to work, then work again.
There are a few problems with that... Everybody has a different metabolism, and metabolism is dynamic (ie the food you eat can change your metabolism), so its hard to guess how many calories you burn a day. Also, its really hard to count calories assuming that you knew how many are burned a day.
My solution is just to run 3 times a week (2 miles)... Then I eat when Im hungry. The only thing I stay away from is Softdrinks/sugar filled drinks, and candy. And dont eat just because you are bored !
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
Since diets are for humans, and not for iron-willed Nietzschean super-heros who heed not the plaints of crude appetite, nor the pangs of hunger, a diet that doesn't work for the averagely-will-powered person is a pretty bad diet. (This logic is also useful for other domains.)
The fact that the dieting population has been getting poor advice for the past several years could also have something to do with the obesity problem, ya think? Naaawww, it's far better for you to be a judgemental jerk.
You know, your attitude betrays a fascinating, yet increasingly common, combination of ignorance and arrogance, that I'm struggling to come up with a new term for it. It's a combination of asshole and moron. Are you an assron or a mohole?
My own results have been mixed. I got pretty lean late last year when I had time to do things right, and my strength and endurance were quite good, but I didn't gain as much muscle mass as I wanted. I was probably overtraining, lifting four days a week an hour at a time, all out.
This dude is hardcore -- he's probably the top male fitness model out there right now. The only modification I've made is that I lift more and play basketball and do less cardio, and try to eat big after a workout to replenish my muscles.
What's worked for Slashdotters?
Seriously it does. How about you just get off your butt and exercise. Seriously, exercise for 1.5 hours every day and eat whatever the hell you want.
--Joey
The interesting thing, from a scientific perspective, is the sheer lack of study - and the reticence from the scientific community to question the party line.
Wow. Sounds just like evolution. What a coincidence. (Seriously, this isn't a troll (although I fear it will be moderated as one), but rather a sober observation that science is not often interested in investigating things that don't fit with the current body of popular opinion. Regardless of one's opinions on diets or evolution, there is clearly much more real science needing to be done before anyone should run around claiming an exclusive on the facts. In general that hardest thing for scientists to admit is that we simply don't know, even when that's the honest answer...)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Barring a genetic or hormonal issue, when you eat, you're taking in calories. Your body burns off some doing its normal metabolic processes, some goes out when you piss and crap, and the rest takes up residence in your fat ass.
The trick is, then, to only consume what you need. Or, less than you need, and your body will eventually relent and burn off some of that fat, and you'll lose weight.
Ladies and gentlemen, time to run up John Walker's(1) bandwidth bill some more, get his name in the papers again, and introduce some more people to The Hacker's Diet.
Available in both North American and European mirrors, The Hacker's Diet takes a practical, pragmatic, engineer's approach to losing weight, and more importantly, maintaining that new weight, both stably and comfortably.
In fact, it even has a section on basic excercise to get you somewhat fit. Not to get you starring in a Bally's Total Fitness commercial. Just able to run up a flight of stairs without passing out. Fit, as in, healthy, instead of fat, as in unhealthy. Gosh, what a concept.
Now we'll do the webblog plug, too. Mark Pilgrim(2) wrote a great writeup of The Hacker's Diet twice, last August and an extended, much more blunt version last October. Here's the October version. Go read it.
Then get off your ass, sit outside, and read the book. Download the PalmOS apps to your Visor, your Clio, or your Zaurus with POSE. And do something about that Mr. Fatty-Fat-Fat nickname.
(1) John Walker, founder of AutoDesk. (2) Mark Pilgrim, that guy who got fired because of his weblog, and who wrote Dive into Python. (3) And why does Slashcode strip out superscript and underscores? Weak.
All I have to say is that it's a long article. If you don't understand low-carb or Atkins then please don't knock it until you read it.
I've always been overweight and have always been in the low-fat and exercise camp. It didn't work.
My wife and I went to a nutritionist who explained the principles behind low-carb. I had heard about Atkins and low-carb and been skeptical until I listened to the principles behind it. It made a lot of sense. 5 months and 50 pounds later, I no longer suffer from acid reflux, and weigh less than I did when I graduated high school almost 20 years ago.
Despite popular beliefs, my weight loss has been almost 100% fat - I get an analysis every other week.
Certainly we can bandy about talking about exersize and balanced diets - and I agree 100%, ultimately the way to stay healthy is a balanced diet (although not the food pyramid, which is a joke) and exersize. But to get to that point obese people need to lose the weight first! And for people who simply don't have a lot of time to exersize (and no, I don't watch TV, either), low-carb works wonders.
I have to say that - it really seems like almost a miracle. I no longer take medication for acid reflux (was taking for over a year and a half). A friend of mine's mom went low-carb and now no longer needs her diabetes medication. And we've all lost weight.
The scientific principles behind it really make sense, and every single person I know who is trying it is succeeding. I know a lot of people doing low-fat diets, too. Some of them are succeeding, some of them not - but none of them have had the kind of results I've gotten by doing low-carb.
I think this is important for this group - I know a lot of healthy programmers, but I know a lot more fat ones.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Open any physiology text book. Two main established tenets: 1. Muscles burn only one type of fuel-glycogen and 2. Fat burns (best) in a carbohydrate flame! How does your body make glycogen? It converts it from simple and complex sugars, ie, carbohydrates. You can make glycogen from fat, but you body only does it in the complete absence of carbohydrates through a process called ketosis, which is extremely ineffecient method for producing energy from your fat stores as well as a source for some nasty by-products called ketones which will poison you at high enough levels. This is why the Atkins diet works, it relies on ketosis to help you shed pounds. Personally, I'd rather ingest the proper fuel and use it to burn the fat on my body through a process called "exercise".
I have had to learn a lot of endocrinology to care for my two diabetic children and this article makes a lot sense to me.
In essence it is saying that the way we get our calories matters more than the amount and that is because of the way our bodies has worked since very early in our evolution. Insulin, which is the hormone that makes it possible for us to use the sugar released from our stomachs into the blood stream after we eat, is also necessary for our bodies to store excessive sugars as fat (for consumption at a later time when we might not have food). This function was useful when we were hunters and gatherers since it was not always possible to hunt or gather something all the times we were hungry.
Now, in this current situation, when we have food every time we are hungry, if we eat more carbohydrates than we can use for the moment and little fat the presence of insulin will convert the excess carbohydrates as fat. After 2 hours of insulin secretion the system will have no more insulin available and the storing will cease for the moment. If we eat the opposite way: (a lot of fat and very little carbohydrates there will be very little insulin secretion because the beta cells in the pancreas secretes exactly as much insulin as needed at any given time). That means that the body will quickly use up the carbohydrates and then use up the remaining fat since there is no carbohydrates available and because there is no insulin present (it has been used up by the carbohydrate burning).
This all makes sense to me based on the admittedly limited knowledge I have of endocrinology. Perhaps someone who knows more endocrinology can correct me if I am totally wrong.
Having lost over a hundred pounds about ten years ago, then gaining it all back and more within two years, I can tell you this. You can tell us to exercise, eat less carbs, eat less fat, eat less protein, work out, (fill in choice of solution here) until you are blue in the face, it ain't gonna work for some people.
I knew a cute little thing that had received her nutritionist something degree back in the mid to late 80's or so. She had a degree, so knew more than all of us. Start her talking about nutrition! She insisted that what everyone was doing, the four food groups, was all wrong. It had to be the pyramid. They believed in global cooling back then also. Pyramid, pyramid, pyramid. Well guess what? No more pyramid I believe. They also sold a bill of goods to the American public, and internationally by convincing everyone that corn oil was better than anything including olive oil, and margarine was much better than butter.
Some people can not lose weight. I know someone who died of a heart attack who weighed over 400 pounds, and I am still heavy.
The sad fact is that the degrees will insist that the Atkins diet is unsafe and unhealthy, and cannot be used. It follows a protocol that is against everything they learned to get their degree. The fact that people actually lose weight on the diet doesn't matter. The fact that in most cases bad cholesterol does not go up doesn't matter. The fact that total cholesterol doesn't go up doesn't mattter. If you die, you die, but you are not allowed to lose weight with the Atkins diet because that would make all those degrees out there useless.
One of my parents grew up in an agricultural background. Heavy carbohydrates all the time. Pasta daily, sometimes twice a day. Bread galore. Yadda yadda yadda. Thin as sticks, the entire side of family.
My other parent grew up heavy meat eater. Not too much carbs. Watched cholesterol religiously. Checked blood pressure with medical equipment at home. SMA-12, SMA-?, SMA-?, tri-glycerides, hdl, ldl. Good physical condition into late 30's. Guess what? Heavy into early 40's, and heavy ever since.
Global cooling, corn oil, coffee causes cancer, margarine over butter, canned formula over brea*t milk, pyramid, b-12 shots, the list is endless.
People must die so that nutritionist can save face and feel better about the basis of their degrees.
Here are four things that weren't mentioned in the Times article and haven't yet been mentioned in the comments here.
First, despite the huge length of the article, nearly everything mentioned to support the Atkins-type diets was anecdotal. Compare that to efforts like Dean Ornish's carefully controlled studies, where participants ate all they wanted of near-vegan foods and generally lost significant weight.
Second, this is anecdotal, but I've never met anyone who could stick with the Atkins plan for more than a year. And while I'm being anecdotal, take a look at the bookjack photos of Atkins and Sears. Do you really think they look healthy?
Third, and this is a huge concern for some and a trivial concern for others, consider the massive farm animal killing that meat-centered diets require. I've personally been healthy as can be for fifteen years, ever since I switched to a vegan diet. But the big attraction for me is that my food dollar no longer funds the slaughterhouse.
Finally, keep in mind that Ornish-type programs invariably contain loads of fruits and vegetables -- which have been shown to significantly reduce risks of many types of cancer. After all, there are other health matters to think about beyond obesity.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
I used the Atkins "New Diet Revolution" book guidelines from about 2/2001 through 9/2001. Dropped sixty pounds, ate grandly. Got back down to my cycling competition weight. Everyone told me I was destroying my liver, heart and/or kidneys, etc. Well, worked great. Last physical was perfect.
... Very annoying.
The hard part can be sticking to it. Everything out there in restaurants, at grocery stores, etc caters to high-carb and, usually, high-fat foods. Going out with friends and family becomes annoying in having to (re)explain how the diet works, counter the heresay "arguments" they have about you destroying your liver, kidneys, heart, flux capacitors, etc.
That said. Works great, but can be hard to stick to if only because of what's typically available. EVERYTHING has carbs, sugars, starches,
For the Atikins dieter who loves chicken nuggets...
Fowl play
I like this one:
Diatetics for the masses is all about marketing and money. Science be damned.
To be successful, a diet plan has to be different and question common reasoning in order to be successful through the sale of books/videos/deal-a-meals/frozen food.
Eating a balanced diet based on proportions of the USDA food triangle? Bah, that's too obvious.
Try eating only grapfruit for a week... That sounds cool. Eat nothing but meat... Hey why didn't I think of that? Here's my $40. Thanks for the new book to add to my growing collection.
Aside from those with genetic disorders, the secret to losing weight is dead simple -- Use more energy than you consume through more physical activity. Starvation dieting will only set you up for a rebound as your body does its best to prepare for impending famine.
You can't make money with such simplicity so the quacks come up with complicated idiotic systems for the sheeple to consume... leaving every one fat and happy.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
after all they are well feed.
Both are healthier (I think) varients on Atkin's diet.
Higher fat, healty protien, and carbs from non-refined sources makes sense. It more closely follows the diet that we've evolved to do well on.
I don't believe in saturated fat. And I don't believe in most animal protien.
I've never seen a study that says vegetables cause cancer, and meat prevents it. It's always been the reverse. Most meat is stuffed with antibiotics (which most experts believe is helping create antibiotic-resistent super bugs) and pesticides (the higher up the food chain you go, the more pesticides you will see, as it is stored in body fat; dead whales in the St Laurence are have toxicity levels high enough to get them classified as toxic waste). The meat industry also creates alot of pollution (mostly due to the size of sed industry); manure poisons ground water, etc. In Canada, we had a case in Walkerton were a bunch of people died after cow shit got into the drinking water during a flood.
And, especially for Slashdotters, don't use vitamin suppliments. Two studies just came out that said vitamin E (and, to a lesser extent, vitamin C) reduce the chances of getting Alzheimers; lesions relating to free radicals are found on most Alzheimer patients, and thus anti-oxidants are being viewed as a potential salvation. But only if you get it from natural sources. Pills had no effect.
And then there was the study on smokers who took beta carotene in pill form. They had a higher incidence of lung cancer than those who didn't take the vitamin pills.
Soy has been shown to have many benefits - lowering cancer risks in both men and women. There are alot of great soy analogues out there for hot dogs, hamburgers, ground beef, etc. Try a few - some are pretty good.
Go read the dieting info on some bodybuilding sites (ABC Bodybuilding is probably the best one out there) and follow the diet plans there - low carb (not Atkins-style ketosis diets), high protein, moderate ammounts of good fats, etc.
How do you think those professional bodybuilders get that paper-thin skin look? Roids won't do it - serious dieting will. Heck, take a look at some off-season pics of the Mr. Universe competitors - they have huge guts and sure as hell aren't ripped. But they lose all that by eating similarly to those diets on the bodybuilding sites (everyone reacts slightly differently to food, so you have to personalize slightly).
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
Don't forget that muscle is denser than fat. So if you actually put on some weight during the diet you're describing, don't sweat it. You don't walk around with your weight tatooed on your head, so if you're concerned about appearances, let the mirror tell you how well you're doing.
BlackGriffen
... what the printing of this story implies about a large percentage of Slashdot users, or that I could really use some advice on a good diet.
:P
Blah.
Since diets are for humans, and not for iron-willed Nietzschean super-heros who heed not the plaints of crude appetite, nor the pangs of hunger, a diet that doesn't work for the averagely-will-powered person is a pretty bad diet.
And my point was that "diets", in the traditional sense (meaning "instant consumption behaviour changes"), are almost always doomed to failure because of willpower cannot hold up to such a sharp change in personal habits (note that kids who are brought up eating healthy foods often persist in that habit, and continue to eat healthy foods. In essence if you have bad habits, blame your parents). The only likely to be successful approach is to become gradually aware of what you're eating (and substitute where possible), increase physical activity, and just get on with it. In a nutshell: Eat healthy and be active.
You know, your attitude betrays a fascinating, yet increasingly common, combination of ignorance and arrogance, that I'm struggling to come up with a new term for it. It's a combination of asshole and moron. Are you an assron or a mohole?
The irony, of course, is that my "you are in charge of your own destiny" attitude is far LESS common nowadays (coincidentally coupled with a ballooning Western public with obeisity rates bordering on an epidemic). Instead we live in a "oh, it's not your fault!" society that gives everyone an out. Again, I'll reiterate: There are people with thyroid disorders or other health problems that make it especially hard (there are people who exercise every day and eat reasonably, yet they still can't lose the weight), but on the other hand there are countless zero-activity gluttons who try to put themselves in the same league: It's absurd, and it's an offense and affront to people who truly are trying and aren't making headway. Obesity brings along with it such an unbelievable array of health problems, as well as professional problems (I believe I read that an obese professional is 28x less likely to get a promotion) that it is something that people need to get a grasp on.
BTW: A wise piece of advice I heard once went as such - "If you avoid it once at the grocery store, you won't have to avoid it dozens of times at home". The advice deals with things like chips, ice cream, etc: If you have the willpower to say no at the grocery store, then you won't have to muster up the willpower several times a day when you open the fridge, etc.
I loose weight easily on a low-carb diet but I find it difficult to concentrate when I'm not eating grains. Any ideas?
I think you're better off with with old-fashioned exercise.
Five months ago, I could barely do 10 push-ups.
Now I'm doing 50 push-ups a day, 250 jumping jacks, 100 crunches (all different styles), and a lot of stretching.
I'm not ripped, but my stomach is flat and could potentially have a size pack if I worked a lot harder.
I'm also training 3 nights a week at martial arts for agility (I'm a lousy fighter, but learning how to roll, leap, tumble are stock-in-trade, so its important to me).
But weight lifting? Nah. Not for joe-average like me who just wants to be fit. I don't care if I look good in a speedo. I'm too old for that nonsense.
but I am doing it the old fashioned way. I've been dieting since the 10th of January. I limit myself to 1600 calories per day and I walk/jog 3 miles per day, five days a week.
Since then, I have lost 51 pounds (from 209 to 158) and my cholesterol went from 240 to 188. I had to buy new jeans because I went from a size 38 (streching the seams) to a size 34. I have done all this with a high fiber, low cholestorol diet. I also take a multi-vitamin.
I was in such bad shape that when I started, I could barely walk those 3 miles. I have now made it to the point where I can:
-Walk a half a mile (warm-up)
-Jog 2 miles
-Walk a half a mile (cool-down)
I'm a real slacker and if I can do it, anyone can; you just have to want to. I also think that you have to look at this as a lifestyle change, or you will surely regain all you have lost.
Jeff
Sometimes I think that America is paranoid about being fat. It's almost like the entire country has this mass eating disorder. Maybe someday we'll get over ourselves and realize that... duh the human body needs a certain amount of fat and that the ultra skinny 'beauty' that is pushed on us by hollywood is not the norm, but rather an unattainable extreme that should not be considered as 'good looking' as it is today.
However, to refute my own argument, what is sexually attractive is almost always the extreme and not the norm. (Look at africans with the lip piercing and neck lengthings) So we may be doomed to forever think that the radical extremes of human shape and size are the sexiest.
Comma, duh.
A diet high in saturated fat can raise your LDL, which can get damaged; this doesn't make you fat, however.
The important thing to remember is that it isn't what calories, but how many.
The Atkins diet induces a state called Ketosis (as in Ketone) where the products of fat breakdown (for energy) accumulate and cannot be used to make more energy; these products act as apetite suppressants and help people diet. A breakdown product of sugars (it happens to be called pyruvate) allows you to metabolise these ketones. So, if you eat fat but no sugar, the fat can't be burned for as many calories and produces compounds that help suppress your appetite.
This may not have beneficial effects on your health. My Dad (who is a nutritionist) is extremely leary of it - not because it won't make you lose weight (it will,) but because it may not have overall beneficial effects on your health.
The thing that demonstrably has a beneficial effect is EXERCISE.
In the case of Type II diabetes, which is muchw worse to get than heart disease, even very mild interventions (150 minutes of activity per week, slight reduction in Caloric intake) cut the risk of getting diabetes by 58%.
That's not a great big shock for doctors, but it is for the weight-loss industry, which is trying to convince you that you have to be thin to be healthy. You do not; if you're obese, your health benefits from being thinner, but even a (relatively, very slight) drop in weight can be of great benefit.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Yea, I know, 9 pages, too much, but you could simply realize that the above is false blatantly false. There are tons of carbs in the American diet, and the increase in carbs since the 80s correlates with the increase in obesity, even though fat intake has decreased.
So let's cut to the chase here: the "problem of the moment" here is obesity.
Sure, some amount of debate remains regarding how to best control this epidemic by controlling *what* we eat. But the bottom line is *how much* we eat.
It's a fundamental mismatch between super-sized overconsumption and generally sedentary lifestyles.
And while there may be a few interesting detours on this road along the lines of fad diets (ie, Atkins), they utterly fail to address the root cause in a sustainable fashion...
"With these caveats, one of the few reasonably reliable facts about the obesity epidemic is that it started around the early 1980's."
...corn?
Gee.
That's the same time we went from granulated sugar as a sweetener to High Fructose Corn Syrup, because it was easier for the food industry to deal with liquid rather than powdered supplies; welcome to "Old Coke"/"New Coke"/"Old Coke But Not Really".
At the same time, we went from peanut and palm kernel oil to... corn oil ("and/or corn oil" on a label means "whatever's cheapest, and it's always corn").
Try and find a food product in the grocery store today without corn oil/corn meal/corn starch/corn syrup/corn syrup solids/corn/corn/corn.
And just what is it that we feed to cows and pigs to fatten them up?
Try an experiment: weigh yourself. Then, for one month, read the labels on everything you buy; and if it has corn products in it... don't buy it. Then weigh yourself again after the one month is up. If you lose weight, please send me the money you would have sent to Dr. Atkins... 8-).
-- Terry
What they found was the Atkins did DID work.
Further, they found that it had a lot less bounce-back than other diet types.
I dismissed the Atkins diet, but there appears to be a steady stream of anecdotal proof that it works.
Enough so that someone needs to publish something in JAMA that is more than the set of anecdotes that passes as knowledge about diets.
This is just another issue of people thinking that co-occurance implies causality -- just like the recent discussion about the huge public uproar about less sleep making you live longer.
There's no getting around the fact that people get fat on low fat diets. The reason for that has been ascribed in the literature to the problem of using observational data to draw interventional conclusions.
Some years ago, probably about 10 years or more, there were studies published looking at the diet habits of obese versus normal weight person. No intervention;they just gave out diet diaries to a bunch of people of different weights and compared the rusults after dividing them into different weight categories. They found that the total calories eaten by people of different weights were not significantly different; the main difference was in the diet composition. Overweight people tended to get a larger proportion of their calories from fat; normal weight people tended to get a larger proportion from carbohydrates. (Protein, I believe, was not significantly different.) This gave rise to the hypothesis that "calories didn't count", and that the way to lose weight was to eat less fat and more carbs...an "interventional" conclusion from "observational" data. In practice, as it as become amply clear, it didn't work out as expected. When an obese person omits fat from his diet and substitutes carbs, his total caloric intake doesn't stay the same...it rises, presumably because he has lost the "satiety" signal. I believe the article mentioned an excess 400 calores. This has to go somewhere...even assuming a thermogenic effect, it's got to result in significant weight gain.
On top of this pure caloric effect, there is the question of the insulin effect; that is, the stimulation of insulin by carbs that is at the heart of the Atkins hypothesis. It's become clear that in at least some people, that's important. I became convinced that there is some truth to that when, last year, I gained a couple of pounds in France, and it didn't disappear despite going back to my usual diet/activity. I love bread, and was eating a lot. I decided to stop buying those big loaves of delicious old style bread every day, and going without bread for a while. No other changes. I lost about 7 or 8 pounds in a month. There really is an issue with carbs!
I have to agree with the other person who replied - this is really short sighted and plain wrong in some parts.
First of all, you obviously didn't have the staying power to read the article. The government has given us guidelines to being healthy - the food pyramid, for example.
20 years later obesity is at an all time high BECAUSE people have been more aware of health issues and thought that by eating low-fat foods they could lose weight or stay slim. The government guidelines simply do not work.
You can blame McDonalds all you want - the fact is that the majority of the population does not eat there. The studies showed most of peoples calories were coming from carbs, NOT fat - which makes sense, since the food pyramid, which is a sham, has high carb foods as it's base.
Atkins, and most low-carb diets DON'T advocate eating fats willy-nilly. There is a clear distinction between good and bad fats, and the good fats can actually help you metabolize store fat - that's why the basic "low-fat" diet doesn't work. People trying low-fat often see an increase in bad cholesterol and triglycerides, while amazingly people on low-carb diets (beyond 3 or 4 months) see a decrease in triglycerides and an increase in HDL - the good cholesterol.
But I do not have to just quote studies and hand waving dieticians - I have lived it. I did not lose weight - even when exersizing, by following the government guidelines. I have lost 50 pounds in less than five months following low-carb (but not Atkins - but they are all similar). My blood pressure went down to normal. My acid-reflux virtually disappeared. I know a diabetic that no longer has to take medication.
Until you understand that low-carb is not just for losing weight, and the implications of what a high carb diet can do (like CAUSING diabetes - the rate of type 2 diabetes has gone up along with obesity - ever since the government said that low fat was the key to health).
The scientific principles behind low carb just make a lot of sense - the blood sugar levels, the insulin production... I didn't believe it until I learned all the principles. Not only do I believe now, but it's worked wonders for me.
And before you get on my case, I get an analysis every other week - my fat free mass (lean body tissue - i.e. muscle) is UP, my total body water is UP, my FAT is the only thing that is down - 50 pounds worth.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Or not.
Anyway, you can stay on your ass all day and sitll not be a fat ass, I've done that long enough, so I know, eh.
It doesn't matter much what you eat, rather what you DON'T eat.
Just give up junk food. Gratz, you've done 90% of the work.
But you're feeling hungry? Very hungry I guess? Ok here's another tip: give up aspartam junk, Pepsi Light, Coke Light and all those "light" stuff. Indeed, they don't have sugar inside, but they taste like sugar, and they make you feel much HUNGRY. It's a trap. Milk would be good, if you can be sure it's not filled with fattening hormons. I know, the WTO says it's harmless but I'd rather not take the chance, thank you. Orange juice is good, too, but same thing, you want real orange juice not sweetened stuff.
So you still want that snack? Ok I have two tips for you: first, chocolate. Buy lots of it. But I mean real chocolate. Get the quality stuff preferably, black chocolate, as pure as you can. It's so strong you can't decently swallow it too fast. So you have to let it melt in your mouth; and it's busy (your mouth) for some time. It contains lots of interesting chemicals as well. I hear you can give blow jobs for the same result but I'm not into that kind of stuff, so I won't comment.
Second tip: bread. Expensive bread is better. The real stuff. There's something interesting about bread, you see, there's lots of air in it. It stuffs you up much more than anything else. You can also get fiber enabled bread for improved intestinal maintenance.
Ok now we've solved the snack problem. How about the meals?
Meals are important. To NOT be overweight, you need to eat. Properly, that is. My advice: spend a lot of money on food. Good food, that is. Keep meals on schedule. No eating outside of meals, except for the small snacks. Food is not to be left hanging around, no snack stuff all over the place, if you want to eat something, you have to get off your ass, go to the fridge and take it. If you're bothered about getting up to go get the food, then you're not really hungry and you can wait next lunch.
Get used to toning down the sweet taste. You can do the same for salt actually; better for your heart. Get used to drinking coffee without sugar. Get used to unsweetened yogurt. And then when you really want sweet, go for it. But keep food with their natural taste.
Sure took them long enough to start seriously considering alternatives. First off, IANAD, but I'm not obeise either, and I know what works.
I eat no special diet, in fact, for a while I was eating fast food almost everyday for lunch. When I had a cholesterol test the doctor remarked that I had the lowest cholestorol count he had ever seen.
Perhaps I have just been lucky and have a great metabolism... But after I started researching to put together a regular exercise program (mostly jogging), I kept hearing the same facts repeated. These were: If you eat mostly fats consistently, your metabolism with adjust to run your body on fat calories. If you eat mostly carbohydrates (complex-sugars) your body will adjust to burn them. If you are adjusted to burning carbohydrates, and start running, when you run out of sugars in your blood, you "hit the wall" while you body tries to switch over to burning fats (and does a crappy job at it, leaving all kinds of junk floating around).
So basically, what looks like is happening, at least from my lay perspective, is that if you eat a ton of carbohydrates any extra fat you eat is going to be dropped off as fat. However, if you eat mostly fats, your body is already burning them, and extra sugar will be converted to fat and burnt later.
So the best thing to do, if you like eating fat, is to keep eating it... and do get off your butt once and a while and actually use all those calories!
It appears Ockham lost his razor and grew a beard.
Obligitory Hackers Diet reference.
Still the king, baby. Common sense, and a lot less trendy crap, and a whole lot more suck it up and deal mentality.
Or even computer science for that matter.
:-P
Weight lose is an easy concept. It's the will power that is tougher.
If you want to lose weight you simply need to eat less then you are eating. It's that simple.
Here are two easy ways to lose weight.
1. Grab yourself a pen and a small notebook. Keep track of everything you put in your mouth. Write down it's name, the time, as well as how many calories.
Total it up at the end of the day. That's how much you need to eat to maintane your current weight.
Now you are 280 pounds? You want to lose weight? Well you don't want to lose more then 2 pounds a week it's not healthy so here is all you need to do. Eat 1500 calories a day. Break it into 3 meals. Do what works for you. I found that 400 for breakfast provided a large bowl of cerial with skim or soy milk. 500 calories provided 2 pieces of skinless boneless white meat chicken. And some salad with low cal dressing as well as a piece of bread. And for dinner you can have 600 hundred calories. So make pasta and measure out your portion or whatever works. Be creative.
So you have a total of 1500 calories. If you stick with this you will get good at making larger meals in fewer calories.
2. So you maybe you are not into counting calories, well here's another easy one. When you make food, make a lot of vegies. Now take your plate. Fill half your plate with vegies. Fill a quater with with your meat, and fill a quater with your grain/pasta/side whatever. If you are still hungry and want seconds ONLY IT ANOTHER PLATE OF VEGIES. Now don't be rediculous, you can't have butter, etc on them, so get creative. It's not hard.
You must be willing to stick to this and for gods sake you must learn to cook, at least a little bit. Late night burritos and a slurpie are not an option. There really is no mircle diet, just quit putting so much in your mouth.
If you do want to still be able to eat a lot you do have a third option, you better get off your fat ass and exercise. Lift weights, run, etc. . . And I'm talking a couple hours a day. Then you could probably eat whatever you want because your body will burn it off. But for most people they simply won't exercise.
I went from 280 to 180 in about a years time with little exercise by simply eating 1500 calories. My blood pressure dropped to a perfectly normal level, I feel great, and I have tons more energy. I fall off the wagon once in a while, but I don't worry about because now that I am smaller I am more active.
Trust me guys this is not hard. You must stick to it. It's that simple.
- Okay now send me $100 for advice.
Personally, I've found this site to be helpful.
As opposed to the "low fat" or "low carb" camps, this dietitian recommends a low calorie diet (why must ppl lump low fat with low cal?), though strongly advises staying above 1200 calories a day.
note: I am in no way affiliated with this site
I am not an expert, but it makes sense to me not to deny my body any foods.
The test holes were drilled on the ocean floor, where the crust is thinner, by a ship called CUSS I, and the project failed when Texas oil services firm Brown and Root blew all the money granted by NSF.
So, I am not off (your) topic -- mohole would be a perfect description for a diet Nazi.
I've lost over 100 pounds and one of the things that helped me do it is diet soda. I drink a crazy amount of diet soda and so I don't think that has anything to do with it. I do agree that sugar messes you up though. You've got to learn how to maintain functionality with a low sugar level. I think that the hardest part of dieting is dealing with the low sugar level that will happen when you are not eating enough to maintain your weight. Which is the whole reason that your body will burn fat, to maintain itself. But of course you can only burn so much fat in a 24 hour period. Which is why you need to watch out, if you get too hungry then you run the risk of gorging yourself and then you are screwed.
Yet, ironically, every single study of diets states that the Atkins diet succeeds specifically because the dieters found it easy to follow : It required the least change in their diet. Consumers Report recently did a diet study, and they actually rated the Atkins pretty high. Why? Because followers were much more likely to stick with it as it encompassed most of their favourite foods.
You're both right. Its shit advice that causes problems, but the majority of people will quit their diet when they haven't lost 5lbs in a few days.
Also, low-fat diets don't work that well. Cut out the crap food, ESPECIALLY the sugary, processed foods (that includes white breads, not just Snickers), eat a balanced meal, and exercise 30 minutes every other day. It ain't that hard if you know what to do and what to expect: instant weight loss isn't true fat loss (grapefruit diets, for example, just dehydrate you - you only lose water weight), but if you stick to your guns, the loss will come.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
I think it might even be legitimate. All you have to do is show this to your girlfriend (or boyfriend if you are that way). I think it is originally an article from the Boston Globe.
But it's difficult to say, because the author clearly has some weird chip on his shoulder. He's just as willing to ignore and bend evidence as the food scientists he warns about.
For instance, he dedicated paragraphs to anecdotes about something a 19th century French gastronome heard a "stout parties" say, then glosses over a study that in normal carbohydrate diets, carbohydrates doesn't get converted into fat. Doesn't that essentially go against half the article? How can he possibly not address it? Furthermore, without being an expert, weren't most diets of the past carbohydrate based? After all, meat-based diets are difficult to maintain without widespread refrigeration.
I've lived in Japan, with lower meat consumption (and rice in every meal), a similarly sedentary lifestyle, and a *much* healther population. Similarly, Texas is the most overweight state in the union, but I'm guessing they're about the closest to living the Atkins diet. I have to wonder why he didn't bring up such an argument. With such an easy way to discount his claims, he *has* to address it.
I live next to Berkeley and I don't particularly like it, but I don't really understand why he includes as an angry aside that the AMA wants everybody to eat like they do in Berkeley - it seems like a bit of rightceous anger rising to the surface, and come from left field. An objective article wouldn't have something like that.
So the article raised my interest in the Atkins diet, and led me to believe that there's a lot more about how the diet works than what people understand (no surprise). But the article itself was an embarassment to the usually-excellent NY Times Magazine. That Heroin article last week was real interesting - more better, check the archives for that.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
The real reason why a lot of poor (by US standards) and recently-but-no-longer poor Americans eat poorly has a lot to do with class mobility. People learn eating habits early, and as part of family cultures. When families are still in "survivor mode," when the experience of scarcity is still persistant in the values of that family, they are taught, first, that food is an intrinsic pleasure and, secondly, that the waste of food is unethical and risky. Add to that factors like a. stress, b. schedules that encourage fewer, bigger meals instead of more, smaller ones, and c. the lack of information about healthier foods (or of a traditional food-culture, like those in Spain, France, and Japan, that has over centuries learned how to make healthier meals) and you have the formula for obesity.
Ultimately, people have the willpower that they have, and I find it far more logical, and a better use of Ockham's Razor, to assume that their contexts and environments have changed more quickly than some questionable intangible of "willpower" has.
Incidentally, if you think I'm an obese person trying to explain away my condition, you're wrong. I'm completely fit, a little less than my ideal weight, and lead an active lifestyle.
So, let me get this straight:
Gosh, maybe we should be eating - gasp - a balanced diet?
Now you're talking crazy, man!
The problem is everyone wants a "magic bullet" and few are willing to do the work unless they can find a "drastic" and flashy diet to throw themselves into.
Eat a balanced diet (complex carbs, some fat and some protein) and exercise and you'll do fine. Stay off the sugar bombs. Eat less than you burn to lose weight. Buy a sports nutrition book to figure out your requirements, because those are the people who are practiced at this math. And don't expect to lose 10 years of fat in a few months.
And like your mother always said, eat your peas.
Give me a freakin break. He presents sound advice that requires much less willpower than 99% of other diets out there, and you freak out.
Learn to take some advice
There's nothing Nietzschean about his advice or plan. Also, who cares if people have been getting bad diet advice for years, they're the ones asking for it. They want to fad diet. Anyone who goes on any diet that doesn't include exercise isn't serious about dieting.
Seriously, the best diet is a bit of common sense. Everyone knows what they can do to thin up, they just don't want to fess up to it. Hence all the fad diets.
The only likely to be successful approach is to become gradually aware of what you're eating (and substitute where possible), increase physical activity, and just get on with it. In a nutshell: Eat healthy and be active.
I read the article, and also the Atkins website, and it is by no means an uncontrolled, "eat whatever you want" diet. You have to be very aware of your carbohydrate intake, and regular testing of cholesterol, triglycerides, weight, etc. is part of the plan. Refrainment from caffeine, alcohol is also in there, and while diet is certainly the main emphasis from what I've seen, exercise is a key component as well. To me, the Atkins diet certainly has what I consider surprising elements (Eggs? Red Meat? No fruits?!) but it also seems to require enough participation and determination so as not to qualify as "too-good to be true."
Since the beginning of februrary, I decided I was way overweight (although most people didn't think so), and I lacked strength and stamina. My cholesterol is/was good as was my cardio tests.
I started with high-impact martial arts (things like where you get thrown, are throwing people, etc. I do this 3 times a week for about an hour.
Nights I don't do this, I do typical exercise, push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, more push-ups, and then more push-ups, and then more sit-ups.
Now that I've gotten somewhat proficient at basic moves, I practice all of them nightly. This does 2 things: I get better at the martial arts, and I get better endurance.
twice a week, I'll do stationary bicycle for only 18 minutes, but hard as I can.
And every night, I stretch like mad for 15 minutes. As result, despite some fairly vigorous wrestling, fighting, throwing, and punching, I've not yet been injured a bit.
Finally, the diet really changed. I cut out soft drinks, and have started to really watch fat (and to a lesser extent carbs).
The result is a body weight loss of about 15% (over 30 pounds), increased stamina, a resting pulse of 48 BPS, a moderate increase in strength (although this is not my goal), and honestly, the chicks do dig me, although being married, this is coming a bit late in life.
Seriously, I feel GOOD lately. I swear I feel 10 years younger. I don't think I was this fit when I was 10 years younger. I can deal with stress much better, and I'm no longer physically intimidated by people (unless they happen to be professional wrestlers or football players).
Stupid sexy Flanders.
As someone who lost over 70 pounds (around 35Kg) over a period of two years, I can say that dieting in the US is a very difficult task. The reason is simple: You get used to the amount of food you eat and once you get used to large portions, it's *really* difficult to go back to the small meals.
I used to eat in those "pay by the pound" places in my home country. I started eating an average of 650-700 grams per meal. Slowly I was able to reduce it to 350 grams per meal without that "hungry" feeling that follows an incomplete meal.
Of course I also followed a very regular course of exercises (walking, hiking, etc).
Three years ago I moved to the US. I've gained back part of the weight I lost. A lot of work and no time for exercise, plus insanely big portions put me on this track. Now, here I am again trying to slowly reduce the amount of food on each meal, but given the prevailing idea that "more is better", not "better is better", that becomes a very hard task. But I'm getting there... Slowly, as it has to be.
Anyway, just remember:
- Eat less
- Eat better
- Cut down the greasy foods
- Don't be too harsh or you'll quit
- Exercise
- Exercise!
- Exercise!!! (You'll feel better, believe me)
- Lose weight SLOWLY while you get used to your new feeding habits.
(What does Andrija Mohorovicic has to do with "mohole"? Well, read this).
Ever see a fat carnivore?
Ever see a skinny cow? (Not counting desert-like lack of food conditions).
Carbs are what food eats...
(Okay, I'm slightly kidding. Humans are omnivores.)
-- Alastair
Back in high school, there was this chick who swore by low-fat garbage. Thing was, she continually expanded in girth. *chuckle* It was hillarious, at least for those of us watching.
;)
Ya know how to lose weight? Get off yer ass. Go frag some peeps in Paintball or whatnot instead of Quake 3.
History has proven that getting of yer arse works. Who are we to argue with that? Oh, I know, we're the people who listen to "scientific" studies, the same ones that say apples cause cancer and flouride causes genetic damage.
Feh. Low fat, high fat, carbs, protein.. All the same. Go get some exercise. Now. Run. Grab a large blunt instrument and chase your boss around for that last stupid decision, even.
Well, you'd need more than a centrifuge -- you'd need things like 2D liquid chromotography and million-dollar tandem mass spectrometers. While we don't look at obese vs. skinny people, comparing the proteomes (set of proteins present in a given tissue) of diseased vs. normal people is what the company I work for does, in the hope that new drug targets can be found. The problem is that people vary for lots of reasons that are irrelevant to the matter at hand, as do even samples from the same person. Statistics on large numbers of samples can help of course, but it is far from trivial to get lots of samples. In general, with modern techniques, a fairly substational chunk of tissue is needed, which generally means the "leftovers" from a surgical procedure, not a simple scraping of the mouth lining or a blood sample.
I have been on the Atkins diet for about 2 months now and after losing over 40lbs (220 down to 180) I am an advocate for this diet - it really works. For any diet OR exercise regieme it takes WILLPOWER. Most people will try this diet and quit after a few days because they get tired of the food they are eating - or they go about it all wrong and eliminate all carbs from their systems entirely. You have to do it right, and want to do it right to make it work.
The Atkins diet to me is more of a lifestyle than a diet - its simply a better way to eat. If you haven't done this diet you're probably thinking that all you eat are steaks and cheeseburgers - while its true that you can freely eat these things (except for the BUN on the cheeseburger) thats not how it is at all. More or less my day consists of: Eggs and a meat for breakfast (I usually have smoked salmon, canadian bacon or sausagues) - something for lunch (anything meat will do - less red meat, go for chicken & fish..etc) and for dinner I have a salad and some more meat - once in a while red meat but mostly other meats that aren't so unhealthy. You can't really have fruit when your sticking to the diet but you can have some vegetables (mushrooms, bell peppers and others - vegetables that are low in carbs, higher in protein). Its really not that hard to do. My suggestion to people interested in starting the diet is not to stick to it for the rest of their life, but REALLY stick to it until they get to their 'ideal' weight - and then get a good exercise regime going to get themselves healthy. However, I feel that you should always continue to eat fewer carbs per day and more protein - its just a healthier way to eat. Unless you are a hardcore athlete, ingesting tons of carbs a day will only get you fatter and fatter. Also - make sure you keep yourself hydrated, drink all the time and don't allow yourself to get thirsty. THis diet done IMPROPERLY *can* wreak havoc on your body. The key is to actually doing it CORRECTLY.
No matter what there are people who are going to tell you that this diet is wrong and that its unhealthy - I strongly disagree. I feel better now than I ever have before and can strongly say that this lifestyle does work. Regardless of if you want to go on the diet - try and cut more 'white' foods out of your diet (white foods = high carb, low protien, starchy foods). Regardless of what kind of activities you do its a step in the right direction.
Also - the people that talked about Atkins having a heart attack, if you do your research you will find it had nothing to do with his choice of diet/food. There was no blockage..etc.
The other thing that helped me out in this? Eliminating the stress from my life. I left my crappy job and town I was living in and moved to a much nicer place. Stress wreaks havoc on your body and eating habits.
Just my $0.02 - the atkins diet doesn't work for everyone - but it worked for me and I love it.
-
aphex
I Steal Music!
Do you want to join me for a discussion over a nice, juicy burger?
You know the kind I mean, with the juice running down your chin, the ketchup and mustard running down your fingers, pickles and onions falling off the side.
I often ask vegan chicks out for a burger just to piss them off. I find most vegans full of themselves and have all kinds of wacky theories (my favorite is they believe meat stays in the digestive tracts for years...morons).
Me personally? I eat in moderation, but when I do, it involves killing other animals, cutting them apart and searing them over an open flame. The way god intended us to live.
Pasta - yup, this one is a biggie... you can still eat it but not to the point were you feel bloated Bread - easy, cut down and switch to whole wheat breads Cereal - go with high fibre cereal with no extra sugars added Pizza - this is still OK occasionally, once again, try to get pizza with not much crust All sugar filled softdrinks are out. All cakes and candies are out. If you need sweets, try to stick with things that have naturally occurring sugars. I have started this way of eating and have stuck to it for over a month now and I have lost 10 lbs so far and I don't feel like I'm starving myself. Giving up pasta and sweets was the hardest for me... but after a few weeks you lose the craving for them.
Meh.
Atkins is no-carb. The trick is to get you into ketosis for short spirts of time where your body does MAJOR fat to energy conversion. However, that isn't always healthy - kidney strain is a big problem.
With a low-carb diet, you still have carbohydrates, but in limited quantities, and they should be good carbs - whole wheat breads, stringy vegetables, etc.
Most people at a TON of carbs in a day, and since those are your body's choice of energy, it never touches fat - especially when those carbs are easily digested (have already been processed).
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
- Keep trying
- Don't be afraid to splurge once in a while
- Weigh yourself often
- Eat 5 small meals per day
- Excercise one hour per day
- A low fat, high carb diet (but low calorie) shows longest term success rate
What has worked for me, is that in the last year I've basically become a half-time vegetarian (about 4 small servings of meat a week). Without really trying, I've lost about 25 pounds in the year. Not a lot, but it makes a difference to me.I still eat lots of carbs and love dairy. I no longer really crave meat. I probably don't get enough veggies. Small things like ordering small meals or not finishing the larger ones at restaurants can really help. So can eating a small snack when you get a little hungry rather than waiting until you are ravenous at meal times.
Basically, I think it boils down to two things: eating a balanced diet and making gradual lifestyle changes you can live with for the rest of your life. What this means varies from person to person. For me, doing this has been easy and losing a little weight was almost a side effect to leaving a somewhat healthier lifestyle.
There's nothing Nietzschean about his advice or plan.
:) Us Americans never liked those existentialists either... bunch of socialist French fag0ts...
In fact, it sounds more like Sartre.
Shit, I wish I had mod points. This deserves a couple more 'Insightfuls'.
OK, so this is one of those testimonial type posts where one person says, it worked for me so it must work for everyone. OK, so I'm not going to say that!
:(. It's not an effortless diet, you would be amazed if you stopped and looked at the labels on food. Damn near everything has a Lot of carbs. Every soda you drink is 30+ carbs, that's my entire days carbs in a single Pepsi! Eating a burger is a bitch carbwise, unless you just throw away the bun (or at least one of them). Sure, it looks weird but... it works..
Let me put it this way.
I'm 6' 3" and I used to weight 299 lbs. I never exersize except to climb out of the viper and behind my 'puter then back into the viper. I cut my lawn with a riding mower and when I'm "roughing" it outdoors I do it riding a ATV. Stairs? Elevators! I mean, honestly... 44" waist and I couldn't get it to shrink.
I tried to eat "Low fat" - oh yea, all those "Low Fat" items at the store. Amazing, I actually GAINED more weight!!
So, then I switched overnight to low carb. Basically I'm doing about 30g of carbs a day. What DO I eat? Lesse, breakfast I have a 3 egg omlet with cheeze, bacon, ham and sausage. For lunch I eat a low-carb bar that I get from GNC and wash it back with the 4-6 Diet Mt. Dews I drink at the 'puter. For dinner? Let's see: Sloppy Joes, Steaks, Pork Chops, Shrimp by the boatload, Lobster tails, crab legs with LOTS of butter (real butter). I eat microwave bacon whenever I feel like a salty snack. Sometimes I get those single serving hot dogs and skip the bun and just dip some ketchup and eat up. I'm telling you - just like the diets claim. All the meat and seafood I want. I skip bread and avoid pasta (that hurt!) and no potatoes; no french fries
You know - how can people ignore the obvious facts. EVERYONE I know who has used a low fat diet has failed and everyone of them I have joining me on a low carb diet and it's working. I am personally, in 4 months, down to 240 and I am aiming for 205 before summer is over. This is not crazy weight loss, it's definately not "water loss". This is real pounds. I have to buy new cloths, my pants just don't stay up on me anymore.
To people who critisize Atkins diets: Pffftttt!!! Especially to fat people on low-fat diets who critisize low-carb I say: AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAA
Low-carb works -- just my own experience... (forgive the typing, I have to get the heck outta here and get my butt home - got some thin-sliced smoked turkey breast in the fridge I'm gonna eat with some pickles).
Here's the deal:
I choose to low-carb because:
- Fewer carbs means fewer glucose spikes and that makes me feel better more of the time. High glucose causes all sorts of nasty effects. Everything from blurred vision, to need to urinate frequently to reduced mental ability.
- Fewer carbs also means I need to inject less insulin. If I want good control and flexibility eating, then with carbs there is trade-off of more frequent injections and corrections. A few carbs here or there can cause low blood sugar, or leave me with high blood sugar. The "rollercoaster" can be one of the worst things about this disease.
I don't follow Dr. Atkins, but a Dr. Bernstein. He is Type 1 Diabetic, and an engineer, and he's had the disease most of his life. He thought there had to be a better way, and as an engineer he set about finding it, and along the way, he picked up his medical degree. He was one of the earliest to support the use of blood glucose testing meters (now an almost mandatory practice), and he supports low-carb. I read his book, and for the first time, it all made sense to me. Since I started using his program, I feel the best I have since I was diagnosed with this disease.It's a shame how much of the medical community refuses to even examine the possibility that these ideas and programs could be right or that they work. I'm just glad a few have been able to get the message across to some people.
That's simply not true at all - Atkins recommends 20 carbs to attain ketosis - no LC diet I know of recommends less. Much less and your body will go into starvation mode. Not only that, but ketosis in not recommended for a lengthy amount of time - only the very beginning. Then you increase carbs to your "ongoing weight loss" amounts.
There's also been no proof that the high-protien aspect of most LC diets has a negative effect on kidneys - it's an often repeated but unsubstantiated claim. I know a lot of low-carbers, but I don't know a single one that has had any kidney problems. But I do know a whole bunch, myself included, that have had a lot of medical problems simply disappear on low-carb. It has really been quite astounding for me, personally.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Shocked and dismayed I am, to find that scientists are mere mortals. Murray Rothbard had a great phrase for intellectuals who were lackeys of the reigning power: "court intellectuals." In exchange for all the perks and privileges, they'd serve as apologists for the regime. Smart, but flunkies nevertheless.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Well, that's interesting...
How, exactly, is the GPL a greater long-term threat? Most of the copyrights will last a bit longer, but they'll still expire.
I assume these are quite high in carbs, so if you go on the atkins diet, is beer a no no? Its kinda bad becuase you have all these *LITE* beers, but have you ever seen a nutrition content label on any? I sure haven't. And what about those of us who have very limited funds? We can't just go buy 8 dollar steaks every night. Are expected just to eat eggs as a primary staple? Sorry for the multiple questions, but both are worth a couple of nurons firing. =)
I think there already is a term for a combination asshole / moron.
Anonymous Coward.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
I tried the Atkins diet a few years back and dropped 46 pounds in two years. It was a greater starter diet in the sense that I lost a good deal of mass and weight. I was thinner, looked better and felt great. Unfortunately, the diet became very tough to maintain, and expensive to boot. Eating eggs and meat everyday is hard. There isnt always the time to prepare elaborate meals (like Atkins suggests...).
I have to say though, the diet does work. It did a few things for me, other than help me loose weight.
In case anyone cares, here is diet that I modified from atkins, it has some elements of his diet, but it also does contradict his "eat fat and protein whenever you want" theory.
1. I eat a natural diet. Whole foods only. Nothing that is processed. Wheat breads, not white. Whole milk, not skim. Atkins strongly suggests this.
2. Fruits and vegetables are the best meal substitutions. For breakfast, I eat fruit if i dont have time to have a meal. Lunch, a salad. You will be suprised as to how much that can fil you up.
3. Eat when hungry. Atkins says the opposite. According to him, you can eat a T-Bone whenever you want. I have the mindset that I eat for energy and nothing else. Your body is a great indicator, listen to it.
4. EXERCISE! What people dont know, is that Atkins always talks about exercising. He doesnt just say "Eat some ribs and sausage and watch the Price is Right All Day". The media likes to make it seem that way, but I strongly suggest that if you are serious about this diet, read his books. It will give you a good insight as to how the diet works, from a medical stand point.
You can totally follow your own diet, but the most important and vital lifestyle change is to EXERCISE! Best thing you can do for yourself...
100% Insightful
I've been doing it for over 4 years now. I used to weigh 165+lbs at 5'7" and bench press 95lbs, and now I am 142lbs and I can bench press 225lbs+, and I'm still getting better at losing fat and gaining muscle/strength. Tomorrow I will be in the best shape of my life, everyday. I did this all through college, where your diet isn't always up to you (for meal plans, or lack of cooking skills) I've tried many, many schemes and I've monitored my strength/fat/weight/etc finding what works.
I can tell you the low-carb diet is one of the best tools to "fix" your body. On a "regular diet" you WILL lose both muscle and fat at the same time. You _never_ want to lose muscle mass. On a ketogenic diet you will retain muscle, and if training properly can gain muscle while losing fat, something that is also thought to be "absurd", just like the atkins diet.
How do you do it here in reality?
Yes you want to eat healthy, and you also live in the real world. That's why you start with a glycemic index chart. Scratch of everying on the top of the list, sugar, corn syrup, potatoes, pasta, etc. This doesn't mean you can never eat them, but if you have to have fast food, skip the fries and the drink, get water. Use substitutes from the bottom when possible, i.e. want a sandwich? some breads are a lot better than others.
Should you eat bacon and butter? No... but you can, and not feel guilty. Can you have the piece of cake? how about some chocolate? YES, but you have to remember that you WILL CRAVE food/sugars after you've had it, and just remember to keep yourself in control for the next 12/24 hours, and you are all set. Balance fullness with hunger, cold calculate what you have eaten and what you will eat, don't let you gut take the wheel, show it who's in control, and it will stop complaining.
Ramen-easy type meal? large chicken breast, bbq sauce, 6-10 minutes of cooking. Just eat it with some water to drink. You won't crave anything or be hungry for hours. A little quicker and unhealther? frozen chicken strips, whatever flavor skip breading if possible. A few minutes in the zapper and you have a meal that will keep you content, no snacking on cheetos by the keyboard, we know how dirty those can get! (and you won't want any)
In the end understanding the process that no/low carb diets put you through will allow YOU to master YOUR body, just as you may wish to master a network/computer/program/etc. and you will find many other "little" things you can do (like not eating 3-4 hours before bed) that keep you healthy, lean, and strong.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
While I wouldn't hold the food pyramid up as an example of good advice (for example milk is pushed heavily, despite being incredibly high in the nasty sorts of fat, at least the non-skim variants), I would say that there are incredibly few people out there who really are aware and in control of their diets (though the numbers have just started to increase. Again I'll point to McDonalds and the fact that, because of a public that is finally becoming aware, was forced to introduce some healthy items): There is row upon row of chips, and one single "healthy" chip (Baked Lays, which is very hard to find as few stores even bother stocking it). At my grocery store there are dozens of ice creams, and a single low fat ice cream. There is a deli full of food, a cheese rack covering a whole aisle, fatty beef as a main course, etc. I would say that we live in a society where fat is a primary consituent of many of the meals out there, and it's very hard to avoid (ever try looking for healthy choices in fast food restaurants? It is VERY hard to do, and usually the items that parade as low fat are anything but). Many studies have detailed the fact that obesity has risen not as more people go on low fat diets, but rather as we become more and more sedentary, and meal portions continues to grow by leaps and bounds.
BTW: I'm not saying that the Atkins diet couldn't work (obviously it can if only because it makes one very aware of their diet, with more of a feeling of self-control), but rather that the real goal is awareness rather than some simplistic "quick fix". The science behind the Atkins diet is incredibly dubious, and is considered dubious by most nutritionists, but the results are something that no one can refute.
The reason high protein diets gets so much flack is that studies have shown that people with pre-existing kidney problems have serious trouble processing the excess protein that comes from the diet. This is potentially fatal, of course.
Studies have not been done to measure the effects of increased protein ingestion on healthy subjects.
> hardest thing for scientists to admit is that we simply don't know, even when that's the honest answer...
..."
On the contrary, scientists admit this all the time. It just that they express it in slightly different words.
Some time back, I saw the advice that the most important part of a scientific paper is the paragraph near the end that start with "... more research is needed
Scientists make their living pointing out that there are many things that we don't yet know, and asking funding agencies to pay them to learn about some of those things.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
"I want you to eat this, but I'm not going to tell you what it is..."
Add to this the problem that a decent study would need to run for at least a year, and preferably several years.
I never really realized how bad diet research was until I tried to find proof that eating more food makes you gain weight.
Sure, we all "know" it does, but find a study that proves it.
-- this is not a
I started a reduced carbohydrate way of eating in November of 2001 and I'm still doing it. My health is greatly improved. I lost 25 pounds of fat, and now weigh a lean 145 pounds. I feel great and have a lot more engery now than I used to when I was bigger and ate the standard western diet. Also, I cured my high blood pressure and no longer need to take blood pressure meds. In addition, I used to get migrane headaches which would ruin entire days for me, but I don't get them anymore either! I have had one in over 6 months. Phew!
For the most part, I eat what is known as the paleo-diet. I consider this a permanent way of eating. I don't find it hard to maintain at all. I can eat an amazing variety of really great food, and in large quantities. As far as 'eating less calories == weight loss' is concerned, that didn't apply to my case. I was eating constantly, way more than I used to eat, and still losing weight. It was amazing.
And yes, I've had my cholesterol checked, and it has improved as well. Weither that means anything is debatable.
For those looking to improve their health, I recommend a book called 'The Protein Power Lifeplan'. It covers the low-carb and "paleo-diet" thing very well.
All you have to do is buy food that is a pain in the ass to cook. So if you're sitting at the computer and you're like "I feel like munching on something," you'll go to the cabinet and say to yourself "man, I don't feel like cooking any of this stuff. Forget it, I'm going back to quake. I guess I wasn't that hungry after all." See? It's perfect because it's founded on your laziness. A variant of this is to only buy bland food, like white rice and beans. It gets you to eat only when you're really hungry.
A few people above mentioned that you need to exercise. Exercise is for lam3rs. Admit it, every time you see someone in a bright spandex jogging suit you think of spider-man. I say, find something you like to do that requires a physical effort. I doesn't matter if it's hiking, playing basketball, doing gung fu or yoga, or rock climbing. You'll see yourself get in shape magically, with no percieved(*) effort on your part. And you won't quit doing it after a few weeks, because, duh, you like doing it.
* hmmm, okay, i before e, except after c, or when sounding like a as in neighbor and weigh, and on weekends and holidays and all throughout may, and you'll always be wrong no matter what you say...
c-hack.com |
Easy: Eat less. Exercise more.
--
http://www.aikiweb.com - AikiWeb Aikido Information
I totally agree with you, actually: There was a time when simple scarcity of food and survival activity requirements kept us at the peak of fitness as a natural course, but as our lives become more and more sedendary (soon there'll be a lift that pulls you out of bed and sits you in your desk at work) we've reverted to a conservation attitude, and we're paying the price for it.
Here's my diet:
Eat less food than you use up each day in energy. At some level of intake, you are guarenteed to lose weight.
High fat food works just as well as low fat food for this, and it tastes better.
Seriously. I lost 105 pounds so far.
For a long time, pigs simply weren't profitable. But, then, they noticed that after a pig escaped, it would go out and eat tons of grains, and the next time they saw them, they were HUGE. As a result, farmers started changing the diets of pigs to mostly carbs, and as a result we get the bacon and sausage we all know and love today.
Don't we which we were cats? Hmm... eat protein I think.
My guess is from a few facts and observations. Typically humans have had lean meat(because they run in the wild you know), vegtables, nuts(with oils) and other animal stuff like eggs and milk probably and some fruit(simple sugar with an *). So I am going to be a little wary of huge amounts of simple carbs and to some extent complex carbs because they really have not been around as long.I might look at a lot of animal fat being unusual too but then if you are an Eskimo.. Now with roots we will get some carbs but breads and cereals we did not get so much of and when we did it had a lot of "roughage" and probably reduce total intake and sped it along. we did run aroung a lot too so look in terms of excess causing rises in blood sugar.
Now just look at what happens when sugar enters the mouth, and it seems to hint our body is not prepared. In Rome/Pompey they found 60 year old people with perfect teeth so they did not have it. Once it gets to our stomach then it goes so quickly into out blood steam and plays havoc with blood sugar and acts like low octane fuel that causes knock. Incidently fruits contain fructose usually with acid and it so happens it digests slowly and even more so than a potato so there is the * and why it does not seem to cause so much trouble. Fructose does not promote tooth decay so well and I think the acid supresses it a bit more. That is why heavy execercise with 16oz of apple juice is going to cramp you up because it won't have time to digest and it will ferment in your digestive tract.
So basically food low on the "glycene index", I think is a problem. You can see the body just does not handle sugar gracefully from blood sugar with rapid fat production and tooth decay and add empty calories. You may also note that higher calories eventually produce more free radicals as well so what does execess carbs do then? You need some carbs but I say stay away from the simple ones. Maybe I was brain washed by Dr Robert Hass "Eat to Win"? Before dumping all carbs dump sugar first(this means ketchup too buddy). I did it when I was 18 for a whole year and let me tell you I ate carbs but not sugar. What happended? I was very lean and muscular while being a bit on the pudgy side when I was 16.
And there's a shitload of research into diet - it's just mostly in very specialised niches (high performance athletes).
Americans have not become fatter since the 1980's just because we're eating less fat, which is what this article seems to suggest. The simple fact is: We've been eating more. And more, and more. The average size of a restaurant entree today is 1.5 times that of one twenty-five years ago. We sip from larger Cokes and Supersize our fries. The simple fact is that if you eat more calories than you burn, you get bigger. It's quite basic. Now, your balance of calories on top of that in terms of fats, carbs, and such matters, but the fact that Americans get fat on low-fat "diets" doesn't mean much by itself.
He's as skinnny as a rake. I guess its the stress of running a terrorist outfit.
To greatly simplify things:
If 1900 calories of simple carbs leaves you hungry 3 hours after you eat it, and 1900 calories of fat and protein leaves you hungry 8 hours after you eat it, which is the better 1900 calories to eat if your goal is to lose weight? Consider that the 1900 calories of simple carbs will spike your insulin levels high, then will drop them like a rock, leaving you not just hungry but intensely hungry. Not all calories are created equal, you can't just add them up without considering the effect that metabolizing different types of calories has on the body, not if your goal is to design a health, maintainable diet.
Also, that fat and protein is going to provide you with far more nutrients that all those simple carbs, which have virtually nothing to offer.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
First law of thermodynamics: energy cannot be created or destroyed. 2nd law, everything becomes heat.
Body temp is 98.6 - to a first approximation this sets energy consumption by the body (exercise and you... anyone? anyone? get hot). 2000 calories/day. 1lb of human fat = 3500 Calories.
Now here's the simple bit: energy in = energy out + energy retained.
Put in 3500 calories eating a pound of butter--or 2.5 pounds of pasta--and it will either come out as heat (eg run 35 miles if you weigh 150 lbs to burn it off, or wait 2 days without eating anything else...)
OR it will stay on your body (=1 lb of fat)
OR it will come out your anus (eg anal leakage from olestra.).
THERE IS NO OTHER OPTION.
There is no magic diet. Zone, Atkins, it's all a bunch of crap... well almost. The real deal is that the difference between a "zone" diet and a NIH diet is relatively trivial. Perhaps a bit too much fat for most hearts, but not really that big a deal. Eating a little more fat and a little less carbohydrate comes out a wash... which is to say the argument is a bunch of crap, the diets don't matter that much.
One good bit of advice from Atkins et al - avoid sugar. If we all skipped the soda at the PC, and the junk food (oooohhh carboyhdrates.... NAW! just 200 calories a can, 400 for a soda and candy bar = 1/8 of a pound of fat you gain that day).
Now, as for the carbodhydrate diets: asians eat some of the most carbohydrate rich diets in the world, and have the lowest obesity and heart disease. They come to the US and they get fat. The ratio of fat goes up, which may be significant for heart disease, but the amount of refined sugar explodes, as does the fat... and everything else. Mmmmm BK double and a giant size coke!
Eat a well balanced diet, get plenty of exercise and forget the Nietzschean crap. Skip the soda, take a walk.
Now this is why I read /. :)
When you diet, you decide not to eat certain foods as a habit.
This means dont eat alot of sugar, or alot of generally unhealthy foods, eat mostly the same boring foods everyday, and forget about stupid nonsense like taste, and you'll be healthy.
Your shape wont change however unless you lift weights.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I prefer to be called a moassronhole.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
I think part of the problem is that you are not seeing what low-carb means. It does not simply mean sugars - although they are the worst, but also refined flours (breads) and starches (potatoes and pastas).
So simply observing that maybe there isn't a lot of low fat dieting that is actually going on (which is wrong - there's millions of people trying to lose weight on low-fat diets) isn't quite right - it's that most diets (ways of eating) include too damn many carbohydrates. I've been doing 30 carbs a day, and in retrospect can't believe the government "allows" 300!
Also, no low-carb diets suggest eating bad fats. Yes, butter is actually OK to eat, but margarine is not - obviously, if we all realize there is a difference between good and bad fats, why do so many people use margarine?
The problem with the choices out there at restaurents and in supermarkets isn't the low-fat stuff, it's all the high carb stuff. "healthy" subway sandwhiches are super-high in carbs. All burger joints have super-high carb buns (and french fries - just as bad as sugar - and most fast food places use sugar in the oil to make the fries have a nice brown look).
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Point being, different types of people have different needs. People who've evolved in the arctic, with the limited variety of foodstuffs there, have different tolerances than someone who evolved in Africa, or Europe. Some of us can eat butt-loads of fatty foods without getting fat; some of us can't. Do what works for you. And, avoid refined sugar, it is the tool of the devil.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
A friend of mine had some success with it. I don't have much dieting experience so I wonder what others here think of this book.
From personal experience, I know a carb-deprivation diet a la Atkins works better for me than the alternatives. I've tried several different diets, but I've been able to maintain Atkins for periods of several months.
One time, after five months of eating steak and eggs and bacon and cheeses, and various other high-cholesterol goods, I went to have a blood test to see whether I was killing myself on the diet. My cholesterol level was 170, and I don't recall what my HDL/LDL split was, but it wasn't too bad.
Different people will do well on different diets, depending on their metabolisms. Don't poo-poo a diet that sounds ridiculous, because while it might not work for you, it could work for someone else.
Don't take away my Krispy Kreme donuts!!!!
Evolution: love it or leave it
Hey, this is cruel. You're just posting this story to make us feel guilty about the incredibly tasty, artery-clogging binge fest that's our God given right on the Fourth of July. Shame on you.
grab all they can all for themselves after all
And after eating bacon and sausage all our lives, we die at the age of 60 of heart disease. Bummer, huh?
Versus vegetarians, who live forever, right?
I'd rather eat bacon and sausage while enjoying life and live to be 60 than eat rabbit food my whole damn life and live to be 80.
I'm in total agreement with you. The real focus on fats is primarily because fats have twice the calories per gram than carbs or proteins, but more importantly because certain fats (saturated and hydrogenated) are proven to be incredibly bad for the cardiovascular system.
You can't beat the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. Either eat fewer calories or exercise more (or both).
To have a healthy heart and circulation system, science clearly says go with a low-fat diet with lots of fruits and veggies. Since corporate America can't make much money on healthy food like brown rice, oatmeal, etc., people are brainwashed into overdosing fatty (expensive) foods.
Also, research that supports the conventional scientific wisdom is often ignored by the press since it isn't "news."
>Expensive bread is better.
Get a bread machine. Nothing's better than fresh bread that just got done baking a few minutes ago. You'll be amazed how good it is.
Also, you have to plan at least 3 hours ahead if you want it, so it doesn't lead to snacking.
We have a name for it...the Perimeter Diet. Shop mostly on the perimeter of the grocery store: meats, veggies, fruits, dairies. Of course flour, toothpaste and chocolate are in the center of the store but there's always a few exceptions. You don't find Twinkie's on the back wall of most grocery stores.
The second aspect is the perimeter exercise plan: park at the edge of the parking lot. Circling or idling your car for 20 minutes to get that spot right next to the disabled parking won't help your butt any (unless, of course, you are mobility-impaired.)
To wit: cook your own food and move your own body. It's not that difficult, even for Americans.
I was watching one of the many cable news channels last night, and they had a program of similiar topic running. Basically, they had medical doctors tracking long term weight loss of various patients who had lost significant amounts of weight, and kept it off.
So what was the outcome of the study?
To loose weight and keep it off..
1. Excersize on a regular basis, and generally attempt to make small changes that provide you with more physical activity. ie, take stairs instead of elevator / escalator.
2. >LOW FAT, high complex carb diet. The more variety the better. Portion control being very important. Keeping the total calorie intake low while keeping excersize high is key to have your metabolism burn off excess fat.
The only way to keep it off is the keep working on it. Just because the average person can't stick to a diet and excersize regimin doesn't mean the diet has failed. The person failed to stick with it. Simple as that.
Also, out of personal experience, here are a few things I've noticed.
1. I myself have switch to a low fat vegetarian diet. I'm a lazy sysadmin / supervisor who sits all day in front of my computer for work, and never has the same routine to allow for a good set-in-stone excersize regimin... so I decided to augment my low amounts of excersize with those diet pills that increase your metabolism. I have lost over 20 lbs since starting this.
2. I have watched a certain family member continue on their "typical american diet" of high fat, high protein foods and soda. This person gained a lot of weight, and although they have stopped gaining at a quick rate, there health is visibility suffering.
3. I have one friend who has lost weight following the Atkins plan. However, its important to note that they only use the lowest fat cuts of meat, and only in small portions. They do not eat any sort of bread, rice, or other carb laiden foods, as per the Atkins plan. He also excersizes daily.
Its quite easy for me to see that basically all diets will work for losing weight, as long as you are lowering the calories and keeping up the excersize. If you cut out calories from carbs, then you can eat more calories from fat. If you cut out the fat, then you can eat more calories from carbs. If you eat low fat foods, you can generally eat "more" other things. Lets say a burger is 500 calories. Your total caloric intake is supposedly 2000 calories. Well, thats a quarter of your max calories in 1 burger. Not even counting the fries and soda, which increase that even higher.
Lets say you go to Subway, I'm sure you've see those Jared commercials. You can have a 6 inch sub, that has about half the calories, but yet is twice as much food to eat than 1 burger from McDonalds. That way, your body "feels" full, and won't want you to go for a second or third burger to fill up on, causing you to go over your max calorie intake for the day.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
You sunk my battleship!
I mean, Slashdot (Slashdot!) has a DIET article on the front page. I think I just saw a flying pig go by.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
...if I didn't have a beer belly and wasn't about 40 pounds overweight!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, butter might not be as bad as margarine, but it's still very bad stuff for your cardiovascular health. A good rule of thumb is, if it's solid at room temperature, it will probably be solid in your arteries as well.
Range Voting: preference intensity matters
Don't confuse the scientific community with the medical research community. There is a big overlap, but they aren't the same folks.
Medical research is very often goal driven. It is also more political because of the implications of the results, and the power of special interest groups in pushing funding (look at the excess spending, by US population needs, on AIDS and breast cancer) [see caveat below before erupting in flame or negative mod points].
The medical community itself is even more conservative than other scientific areas. It is dealing in an area with many more uncertainties than mere physics (or for that matter, evolution). When dealing with diet questions, especially, things get very difficult. Good data is hard to get - especially about long term effects. The chain from intake to effect is long and often has lots of unknown steps. The field is very political and emotional, because so many people have vested interests (like those of us trying to maintain decent health, like those who want to oversimplify, those who want a one-shot cure, those who feel the whole problem is willpower, etc).
Furthermore, science and especially medical science is rightly suspicious of the flamboyant and the profitable. Atkins, by pushing his theories publicly and making a lot of money on it, essentially discredited the whole area of studying low carbohydrate diets! Not because he was wrong, but because he is embarassing to the more "sober" or "proper" scientists.
None of this makes him wrong. In fact, there is a lot of evidence now to show that the conventional wisdom of the food pyramid is wrong. Besides... how much of the food pyramid was influenced by the various food industries rather than science?
I think there is a good reason to suspect that low carbohydrate diets, and especially avoidance of high glycemic index carbos are a good idea - at least for some people. There is laboratory evidence of positive blood chemistry improvements (I exsperienced this myself - when I was on an low fat diet, my HDL was very low and the ratio bad... when I dropped off the wagon and pigged out for a few months, my HDL ratio was much, much better).
The critical thing is that we don't know enough to be sure *what* is appropriate when it comes to eating and exercise. We have hints from evolution that high carbohydrates are not something our system was optimized for, and here in Arizona we have a population group (Pima Indians) who have extreme problems with carbos (50% type II diabetes rate by age 30). We know that eating fat increases blood lipids, but we are learning that perhaps it is the kinds of lipids, not the amount, that is important in many areas.
I am now on the Atkins diet. I hope it works. I know, as any person who is serious about maintaining a good weight, that the trick is not losing the weight - it is adopting a lifestyle that will keep the weight off long term. But first you have to lose it, and recent evidence is showing that just having the weight is itself a risk factor - it screws up your sugar metabolism, for example.
So, I think the article is more or less right. The community adopted an orthodoxy, based on what was known at the time, and stuck to it. And that orthodoxy was incorrect. Not totally wrong, but significantly wrong.
An example of how this works in a simpler case is with ulcers. The orthodox view of ulcers is that they are caused by stress, and relived by control of stomach acid and relief of stress. But low and behold... an Aussie doctor discovered that treating ulcers with antibiotics seemed to work better. Ulcers are typically found associated with the stomach bacteria helicobacter pylori, and eliminating that bacteria generally cures ulcers. It has taken a while for that discovery to be confirmed, and even longer to make it into general practive. I would be that there are many doctors even today who treat ulcers with acid control medications and diets rather than antibiotics, even though in general the antibiotics are clearly the better solution.
This example shows how hard it is to get an unorthodox theory to become orthodox. It is even worse with diet, both because the science is harder, and because there are a lot more noisy "diet quacks" out there. And of course Atkins is one off those in the sense that he went to the public, and made a pile off of it, so of course this makes it harder for his notions to be accepted. Furthermore, it is clear to me from reading his site (www.atkinsdiet.com) that there is some quackery going on there... for example, the advice to replace antidepressant therapy with St. John's Wort is just plain wrong as a general prescription.
Put another way, you have to do your own reading and make your own opinion, because the experts have their biases and hard fought positions, and they don't agree with each other.
The only good weather is bad weather.
There was a Science or Nature article a few months ago to a year ago about this. I really wish I could remember where it was, because it was fascinating. I'm too tired to look it up now, but if you have online access to either I'd recommend searching for appropriate keywords.
The upshot of the review, if I remember, was that many academic nutritionists feel that existing and past guidelines and public health campaigns have often been based on political rather than scientific concerns.
In particular, the review seemed to suggest that current research suggests that the emphasis on "too much bad food" has been misguided, and that the real problem is "not enough good food". That is, it's not so much that those with diets of high saturated fat and lots of animal products are eating poorly because of the fat and animal protein, but rather, because they're not eating enough (percentage-wise) plants.
Overall, I came away with the following message based on actual scientific data:
(1) Don't intake too many calories. Exercise.
(2) Avoid trans-fats--i.e., artifically hydrogenated fats.
(3) Eat lots of plant products, especially fresh plants. Make plants a large percentage of your diet.
(4) Eat as much meat, butter, carbs, and naturally saturated fat as you want, given that conditions 1-3 are satisfied.
I don't have the impression that what public health experts have been telling us is that far off. I suspect there's been too much emphasis on avoiding red meat, etc, and not enough on seeking out plants. But other than that small detail, I don't see there being that much of a difference.
Nice analysis, but incomplete. (Too simple).
Fact, the average human adult exhales a bit under a pound of carbon a day (as CO2).
Fact, energy balance must take into account not merely black body radiation at 98.6F or even conductive loss to the atmosphere, but also thermal losses from heating up the thousand or so cubic feet of air one inhales/exhales every day and the couple of litres of liquid peed/sweated out. This will vary by ambient temperature, of course.
Fact, it takes energy to convert that pound of butter into something that can get stored in fat cells in the body. It takes yet more energy to convert that stored fat into something that the muscles/brain/organs can use for fuel. It also takes energy to convert 3500 Calories' worth of sugar to a form the body can use -- but not nearly as much.
-- Alastair
it's solid at room temperature, it will probably be solid in your arteries as well.
The question is, then, how much of it actually gets to your arteries?
I have been pwned because my
Until she actually sees a doctor that diagnoses such a problem she should assume her thyroid condition is all in her head. This is coming from someone who thought he had diabetes, a thyroid condition, meningitis, and ultimately multiple sclerosis. Giving yourself a disease that can suck the energy out of you will suck the energy right out of you. I've been a lazy bastard all my life (doesn't help that I'm completely uncoordinated and feel like an embarrasment when exerting myself), but what little excerise i do get does tend to lift the cloud of exhaustion, until i overdo it and get sore and another kind of tired and give up on it for a few weeks. Try getting her to exercise without realizing it, like insisting on going to stores in the mall or whatever that happen to be on the complete other end, or park in the absolute farthest spot you can, anything that'll get her to move a lot to get somewhere she wants to be.
Firstly, Milk has high calcium, and is almost a complete meal in itself. The only thing it doesn't contain is high enough amounts of iron, magnesium and unsaturated fats.
Your correct on one point. Meal size. Shitloads of studies show that the more you put in front of someone, the more they'll eat. Soft Drink sizes and meal sizes have tripled over the last 25 years, THAT is why everyone is getting fat. Combined with more luxuries and less physical activity, we have a winner.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
try searching google for atkins dangers, here's one that came up.
btw, wtf is with the troll mod?
-Jon
this is my sig.
Yeah. Had to give up donuts and chocolate and coffee and milk...
And the diet is rather monotonous.
I started it not to lose weight, but to stop being hypoglycemic. Sonuvagun, it works!
Seems there's more than one benefit to this strange diet...
Assuming you mean 20 grams of carbs per day, that's like half a piece of bread. That is basically nothing. One french frie puts you over the limit.
20 years later obesity is at an all time high BECAUSE people have been more aware of health issues and thought that by eating low-fat foods they could lose weight or stay slim. The government guidelines simply do not work.
As mentioned above. most people do not eat a varied diet. This make the food pyramid ineffective. If grains are considered white bread and pasta, vegetables considered lettuce and the occasional tomato, and fruit is considered juice, one is better off without carbohydrates. All one would eat would be sugar, and the calories would be wasted. On the other hand, if one did follow the pyramid, and ate a few cups of whole grains, a few cups of fresh vegetables, and a few pieces of whole fruit, one would have a healthy and nutritious diet. Combine this with a few ounces of protein, and a very little extra oil, and one would have a very healthy diet.
You can blame McDonalds all you want - the fact is that the majority of the population does not eat there. The studies showed most of peoples calories were coming from carbs, NOT fat - which makes sense, since the food pyramid, which is a sham, has high carb foods as it's base.
McDonalds is a paradigm representing the protein based diet with pure sugars and fataround it. If you have white bread, french fries, and lettuce as you carbs, you are better off without them. Even at restaurants, the carbs tend to be very simple, with only token vegetables, and large amounts of fats added to the food. This is not a good diet. It would be better to have a healthy food pyramid diet, but the food proccesors are making such a diet very difficult to attain.
Atkins, and most low-carb diets DON'T advocate eating fats willy-nilly. There is a clear distinction between good and bad fats, and the good fats can actually help you metabolize store fat - that's why the basic "low-fat" diet doesn't work. People trying low-fat often see an increase in bad cholesterol and triglycerides, while amazingly people on low-carb diets (beyond 3 or 4 months) see a decrease in triglycerides and an increase in HDL - the good cholesterol.
And fats are only part of the issue. As much as we would like to fantasise that we can eat all we want and not get fat, carbs don't make people fat, fat don't make people fat, it is people eating too many calories that make people fat. Processed simple carbohydrates and fats both allow people to consume large amounts of calories without getting full or significant amount of nutrient. Both are fiber poor which can contribute to cholesterol and triglycerides problems. Categorizing all low fat diets as high simple carbohydrates would be like categorizing all low carb diets as high fat. It is not fair.
But I do not have to just quote studies and hand waving dieticians - I have lived it. I did not lose weight - even when exersizing, by following the government guidelines. I have lost 50 pounds in less than five months following low-carb (but not Atkins - but they are all similar). My blood pressure went down to normal. My acid-reflux virtually disappeared. I know a diabetic that no longer has to take medication.
I don't either. I can just point to all the people I know on diabetes diets who have lost weight and become more healthy. I can also point to entire countries of healthy people whose diets are based on complex carbohydrates.
Until you understand that low-carb is not just for losing weight, and the implications of what a high carb diet can do (like CAUSING diabetes - the rate of type 2 diabetes has gone up along with obesity - ever since the government said that low fat was the key to health).
If the purpose of low carb diets is to replace sugar with protein, that is fine. But implying that complex carbohydrates causes diabetes and obesity is just wrong. Eating too many calories makes one fat, and eating too much sugar and fat causes other problems. The same is true with too little fat or too much protien. I think we should not give up on the balanced diet just because it is more profitable to sell processed food.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I don't think a fixed body temperature neccesarily means a fixed calorie consumption. You're not spitting out that much heat constantly, your body is trying to maintain that temperature, and adjusts itself accordingly to match external factors.
umn as a person with a hormonal disorder(not thyriod though) I can tell you that this can be a bad thing. My hormonal disorder made me gain a little fat(and it is mild) but treatment works, just not over night. Some doctors are reluctant to treat people with thyriod or steriod hormone replacement EVEN if their levels are lower than they should be for a person that age. Get involved with her treatment and see if she is geting enough hormone. A lack of thyriod hormone will cause severe fat increase among other health prblems.
The only way to bust a doper--is when you yourself become a smoker!
actually adkins is no carb for a while then very low carb, then low carb( what dr. adkins calls a healthy level. The no carb part is only for the initial weight loss. I think most people do no carb for less than a month. I might ad that ANY diet that does not include weight lifting is likely to fail. You lose 1 lb of muscle mass for every 3 lbs of fat. This reduces your overall metabolic rate.
The only way to bust a doper--is when you yourself become a smoker!
A good rule of thumb is, if it's solid at room temperature, it will probably be solid in your arteries as well.
Uhm... only if you're a reptile.
umn the science behind the adkins diet is RIGHT ON. In fact as far as removing fat from a persons body nobody is really saying it does not work. Now as to keeping the fat off and improving long term health that is debatable. The diet by itself(if followed) is the most effective diet for most people to shed fat. HOwever a simple diet without muscle increasing activity(resistance training) will not improve long term health. Of course frankly to improve health without a diet, via activity only, is likely doomed to fail too. Also adkins is NOT a fad diet. They studied for a long time to create the plan and ketogenic diets are used (Esp in sports) a lot. Fad diets are more like the cabbage diet, celebraty diet, juice diet , etc.
The only way to bust a doper--is when you yourself become a smoker!
Except if you need to lose weight, it is easier for many people to cut out carbs/sugar than it is to cut out fat/protein. So if you're looking to cut calories, ditch the bread, the potatoes, the fruit juice and the soda. That's easier than trying to eat smaller portions of everything, and easy to follow.
That's why people like "Atkins"
I'll agree that people learn eating habits early on and tend to maintain them. However, the pretense that "survivor mode + stress + asymetric information = bad foods" is silly. The only reason people eat poorly is sheer laziness and lack of willpower. Yes, this is likely grounds for me to be considered a troll, but I've come from a similar background and I find it hard to extend sympathy. I was raised in a family hovering above the poverty level in the middle of Kentucky, which by all rights should doom me to smoking and obesity. Neither of those problems caught on.
What I find hardest to believe is that overweight people are in need of "proper advice or information" to help overcome their problem. Ask anybody what healthy food is and I guarantee they can list things like fruits and vegetables. This is not uncommon knowledge. It's essentially like smoking-- sure they know it's bad, but changing requires effort and going against the norm. Oh, and quit falling for fads. There is no miracle pill or magical set of electroshock therapy that will make you look great while you sit on the couch. Do the things that nobody likes, such as exercise and eating right, and I guarantee results. It's a simple concept: If calories in are less than calories out, then weightloss occurs.
The final issue I have with your argument irritates me above all others. Anybody that is poor and is truly in survivor mode should not be buying junk food. It's the reason they never get out of poverty and why America is so deep in debt. People cannot afford to be nickel and dimed when they buy Doritos and Coca-Cola. Buying all that unhealthy food costs money (if you don't believe me, compare the price of Doritos to pinto beans) and you've gotta eat some things that taste like crap if you ever want to get anywhere. The world is not a comfortable, caring place. The choice is willpower or poverty and obesity. Exercise a little, eat right, and just toughen up. Parents can make things harder for us but we are by no means slaves to our backgrounds. I'm not sure who to attribute it to, but the quote I'm looking for is "Wallowing in mud is not a way to get yourself clean."
"Software is like sex. It's better when it's free." -Linus Torvalds
Actually.. if you want piglets to grow at a profitable rate and not eat each other's ears and tails, you feed them (are you ready for this?) MEAT MEAL. Once a region's hog growers discover this, local feed mills can't keep meat meal in stock. (When I lived in a farming region, I had to RESERVE my paltry 500 lbs. of meat meal for my kennel, well in advance of each shipment, or the hog growers would beat me to it.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The editors should really put the link to the majcher link in the front article. That and there should be a +1 Karma Whore moderation. I'm not trying to be a troll or insult you or anything and I don't have any problem with what you are doing. It's just that none of the moderations are really appropriate for this type of post. The service is appreciated. I am just suggesting a change to slashdot and burning off what little karma I do have.
Nice Marmot
I don't know why it's such a mystery. One of the first things we learned in my 2nd year college biochemistry class (way back in 1974) was why a high-protein, high-fat, zero-carb diet burns body fat like crazy -- it's basic, well-documented biochemistry, and given that, there's nothing to argue about.
And back then, this wasn't a fad diet, it was a highly controlled diet used only for the morbidly obese, and only under direct medical supervision. It sets up ketosis, which if it gets out of hand can be quite dangerous to your health. That's why a *true* zero-carb diet should NEVER attempted under unsupervised conditions. But a modified high-protein, low-carb diet (like Atkins) is safe, because it doesn't *totally* change the body's biochemistry, like a zero-carb diet does.
Lo these many decades later, I don't remember the biological details of the zero-carb ketosis diet, but anyone interested can surely look 'em up.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Hey, it's close to true. I have to think of other girls anyway. She already has a low self esteeme, and I've been trying to prop her up. Maybe I should tear her all the way down. Maybe she'll become anorexic. Those other posts aren't going to help. I've already tried to do low impact exercise with her like hiking and canoeing. She quites after 5 minutes. Sadly, though, if I was smooth enough with women to find someone to cheat on her with (who does't look worse) then I would't be in this perdicament.
... er or is that grab the galfriend, take a roll ...
I lost 50 pounds in three months on the Atkins diet. It wasn't even hard. I would have lost more but I cheated for a weekend about once a month.
Your mileage may vary.
And Japanese people live a whole lot longer than Americans. Why do you think that is? Genetics, you say? Well, actually second generation Japanese-Americans are much fatter, and more prone to diabetes, and heart attacks than their relatives who grow up in Japan. So are second generation Chinese living in America. But second generation Chinese living in Japan are fine.
All of this carb bashing is senseless. The longest lived people in the world get nearly 50% of their calories from rice... and then eat noodles frequently too! In fact, it is those segments who have adopted western diets who are those with obesity problems. It's sheer insanity to just read your Atkins book, nod your head and figure that carbs are the root of your eating problems. I am suspicous of all the sugar in western food, but NOODLES AND RICE EATERS DON'T HAVE TO BE FAT!!!
Now, back to that evolutionary argument. Where exactly were all of our ancestors getting juicy porter house steak? As I understand it, most wild game such as deer or elk have less than 10% of their calories coming from fat. I don't see how any primitive human could have come close to the over 30% of calories from fat diet that is popular in America. What else did they eat? Fruits? I'm not really willing to buy the idea that we've all evolved to need cow meat (or at least not any more than we need agriculture).
Oh, and by the way... Japan isn't the only country of carbohydrate eaters who are skinner and longer living than Americans. The French also fit the bill (though not as extremely). How many fat Chinese people do you know? Or Indonesians? Or Thai? You know what? It's not eating many carbohydrates that makes you fat. It's eating many calories.
The answer is simple. The "article" was a promotion for the Atkins diet. Here is my challenge to anyone who disagrees (and I am interested): Find me one elite athlete in any power , speed, or endurance sport who follows the Atkins diet.
I'm a gnu world man.
You look for moral language to berate people who do not meet your standards. Fine for talking to your cousin or the like, completely useless for dealing with problems on any level beyond that.
About a year ago, I was fat. Not gross, but definatly verging on the relm of unattractive.
I looked into all these diets and there was so much conflicting information, that I just made up my own.
It was very, very simple. 1. No booze except on the weekends. 2. No matter what, no fast food (I still ate out quite a bit, just at sit down resturants where the nutritional value was a little better). 3. Walk for an hour a night. 4. If you ever are full, don't be afraid to stop eating (I had the bad habit of always needing to finish off my plate, even if I was'nt hungry).
Being somebody who spends 90% of his waking hours behind a computer in a desk chair (not to mention quite a few in my sleeping hours), it probably was the perfect fit.
I lost 45 pounds in 7 months, I feel much better, got to learn a lot more about my town (by walking), and have been told I look 'really good' by a number of very nice women.
I doubt this would work for somebody who was highly obese, or somebody who has a eating disorder... but chances are that for your average geek whos putting on the pounds, it just might work.
The Internet is generally stupid
You must do sprinting then. When I do sprints it really hammers the legs. But I also do the leg press with 800 lbs or so. Marathon and long distance runners tend to not have the biggest leg muscles. They are lean, but not huge. Triatheletes have a little more mass, it all depends. (Swimming is by far better for you than running if you care for your knees at all.)
Most people in the gym train all wrong, I did for 4 years. You just do bench every other day and neglect most of the other muscles. But you can't spot reduce fat, and you can't spot gain a lot of muscle. Your body won't let your biceps get huge while your tri's are weak. They have to grow fairly close together.
Plus try and increase the weight everytime you workout, that is how you muscles react and grow larger. It doesn't matter if you can only move the weight 1 or 2 times, that weight will be easy for you at the end of 8 weeks.
My mother tried the Adkins diet when it
came out and lasted three days. She complained
it made her nauseous. She was very scaird at how sick it made her. My father did the Stillman all meat diet. He lost the weight and eventually gained it back. He also ended up with gout.
I know I wouldn't last three days on a low carb diet. I'd start looking for the fruit bowl
and be in misery at the missing bread (I like
whole wheat bread), rice, and pasta. You can't stay on a diet if it makes you utterly miserable.
I've lost weight successfully three in my life, and each time I did it with portion control and I still enjoyed my starch and fruit.
The first time was on my college meal plan. I drank water instead of soda, avoided all the pastries and ate only two hard boiled eggs or a slice of bread and peanut butter for breakfast.
The other two times I lived mainly on whole grain cereal (Wheaties, wheat chex or Grape nuts flakes) with skim milk and fruit for breakfast, and peanut butter (and sometimes fruit preserve) sandwiches on whole wheat bread, plus fruit for dessert for the other meals.
I was satiated, and I don't think it was the fat in the peanut butter. During one of these dieting bouts, I kept a measuring cup by the cereal box. Cereal was expensive and I was poor and I only wanted the recommended portion.
I ate raisins with my cereal some of the time, and I still lost weight. I think this worked for a couple of reasons. I don't think satiety comes from protien or fat. I think it's in the mind. If you eat a full and complete portion of something, you've had your portion and that's it. A piece of fruit is also a portion. One is all you are supposed to get. To take more is gluttony. I think this is geting into the area of habits and ritual taboos.
Also cereal, fruit, bread, and peanut butter taste good. I think they taste better than fresh meat which needs a ton of salt to taste good. The cereals I was eating were flavored with sugar, salt, and malt syrup. Fruit of course is just terrific. The blond raisins were the best, though apples are a universal flavor.
Since I had meals I liked, I felt good about what I ate and was satisfied enough to stay on the diet which came out to about 1500-1800 calories a day. I was on it for several months and was working for a plump shrink at the time. I had spent all winter bundled in sweats that were fairly shapeless.
The shrink made her living helping obsese patients lose weight among other things. I remember arguing with her that raisins were helpful for losing weight because they tasted so good, you would not be tempted to eat other foods if you got a daily ration of them.
Come spring, off came the sweat shirt, and
boy was that shrink surprised. I am right now addicted to soda and weigh a bit too much. I wonder if a variation of the old peanut butter sandwich and wheaties diet would work again. I love sweet drinks, even though I know that calories you chew on provide more satisfaction. I think it's the chewing and the swallowing not the chemistry that do it.
In short, I think satiety is a series of complex cognitive tricks. It's not just chemistry. That's why tripping those tricks helped me lose weight. I think the fast food epidemic also catches those same cognitive tricks and trips them the wrong way.
My mother has been able to finally
lose and keep off weight with a low fat high complex carbohydrate diet. She's given up meat but eats fish when she goes out. I think losing weight is just a question of knowing yourself really well and then working with what makes you happy so you stay happy while cutting back on food. Not only does the weight come off but since you know what you really like to eat, and have some ideas about right amounts, you are going to hopefully use that knowledge to keep the weight off when you go to a less restrictive regime. I think the belly just follows where the head leads, it's getting the head to lead that's the hard part.
Eileen H. Kramer/ZOIDRubashov/Roanna
Please visit ZOID CITY Community and Community Competition http://www.zc2zc3.st
That's why you don't need to eat vegetables if you eat enough meat: The cow ate enough vegetables for both of you.
Now I guess this can be another reason why I'm not one. How come it seems like those guys are always so skinny though? The article mentions the high-carb diets in the Caribbean and Africa contribute to a lot of obesity. Well how about asia? My roommate is chinese, and I don't think he eats anything without rice. He's not fat at all. My analysis sucks, but shouldn't there be a huge problem with obesity in asia?
I'm here to tell you about a new diet, it's guarrantteed! Start my diet and you'll be shedding pounds in no time! It's called "The Flu" That's right! The Flu! The Flu works by shutting down your body, and supressing your appetite. You won't even want to think about food when you're on my diet!
Go read some research, the Atkins diet and all the other kidney-abuse diets work just like the flu. What happens to your body when you're on the Atkins diet is exactly what happens when you're dying of cancer. But hey, ever see a fat cancer patient?
From what I remember, Atkins talked about alcohol's being a double whammy: First, it looks a lot like sugar to the body. Second, while it's in your system, your liver will make its metabolization its first priority. Meantime, your bile production (essential for the metabolization of fats) effectively shuts-down.
I've done Atkins about six years ago. It works great and can quickly "fix" me if I've let myself go for a while.
Funny thing: when I quit drinking almost ten years ago, I suddenly (in under three months) dropped from 230 lbs to 180 lbs without changing much else in my lifestyle.
How about an Enron?
It does work; I lost all the weight I wanted to and I *kept* losing weight. When I got to the stopping point I started eating whatever I felt like and it wasn't enough. I had to do ice cream shakes for a while to maintain. After a few weeks I started getting too heavy and stopped the shakes. I eat what I feel like now and my weight is where I like it.
1000 SlashDot sigs
"If you avoid it once at the grocery store, you won't have to avoid it dozens of times at home".
;-)m l ). It's working for me. I've lost approx 13 kgs in one year (from 95 kgs to 82kgs) and it makes perfect sense. Just eat less and be more physically active. The percentage of ppl not being able to loose weight due to a medical condition is probably around the 0.1 - 1 % - the rest are just eating too much. Perfectly simple. /m
hmm...pizza delivery ?
Seriously, the only diet that I got to work is the hackers diet (http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/hackdiet.ht
there is no silver bulochka
Working for necessity's mother.
I once lost 55 lbs in six weeks eating nothing but complex carbs and working out twice a day. Kept it off as long as I worked out, even after changing the diet to admit fats and protein. That was drastic but it can be done.
IMHO the best plan blends the approaches of Dr. Weil and Bill Phillips
Become friends with your Natural food store and mix up your work outs to stay entertained! I ride my bike for 45 minutes at lunch five days a week and after work and weekends practice yoga three days a week interspersed with lifting two and rock climbing one.
Make it a phased approach changing no more than one thing a week. If you find you cannot change a habit move on to the next and try that one again later (I had the hardest time giving up peanut butter).
Simply, eat Organic/Naturally, get your cardio work outs and lift.
My daughter is to teach me rollerblading next week and next year my goal is to get into kayaking.
I feel great!
Beal
bamph
1 - Eat organic food - especially meat. Avoid growth hormones and unnecessary antibiotics (you might need them one day and increased exposure reduces the beneficial effects.
2 - Eat lots of fruit and vegetables, the UK recommendation is 5 portions a day. I eat far more than this - but then I REALLY like fruit.
3 - Eat FISH - fish is very good for you (NO! don't eat fugu liver...)
4 - Drink plenty of liquids but don't go overboard on caffine - there are many green teas that have low levels of caffine - my fav is a green ginseng tea - few cups of that in the morning and my brain is soon back in gear!
5 - Avoid crisps, chips, fat, burgers, sweets, chocolate etc, etc - HOWEVER this DOES NOT mean don't eat them - they taste good and therefore the psychological effect of eating something you enjoy probably outweighs the negative effect on you body!
If you think this all sounds like a bit of a drag it really doesn't have to be. It is just about changing your habits in subtle ways - buy a big big of apples (for example) and eat one of those instead of that packet of crisps, chocolate or whatever you snack on at work. b4 u know it your getting 2 or 3 portions of fruit a day. easy!
Another tip - buy a steamer - I got a good steamer for less than 20quid - All you have to do is take all you veggies - chop 'em up and bung 'em in (spuds take longer). There is very little washing up and it requires virtually no attention (and doesn't take long) - combine this with a grilled chop or fish and there you go - shouldn't take more than 20->25 minutes to do dinner..... and it's better than lard.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS..... balance - most natural food stuffs are of some benefit to you - do not eat the same thing all the time - the world is your lobster - there is more food out there than even I could eat!
And lastly - leave the car at home.... if it isn't far and it's a nice day then walk - don't run or jog (it'll do you knees in!!!) walk - walk everywhere - carry your shopping back from the shops - walk to the shops - walk everywhere - it is very good for you and unlike being stuck in your car you'll get to see a lot more stuff. Perhaps take up some physical activity - I never really have done because I find myself to be quite an active person anyway but I LURV my rollerblades....
L8rs...
"None of this shit works" -W.Shatner
Offtopic? Debateable :-)
:-) For me its not much of a problem, I don't walk around naked. Just don't go in blind and buy everything these sales people feed you, be aware of what you're doing and the possible results.
Since the common trend of this thread seems to be the posting of one's own experiences at weight-loss/gain I will relate my own experience in this field. I used to be a swimmer in my early teens, stopped and blew up like a balloon (98kg's). I wasn't as overweight as some people, but it was enough to do the psychological and physical damage (mostly skin). I experimented with allot of these weight-loss plans until one day I got it into my thick skull that I was going to starve myself.
That worked, for a while. I lived on a basic diet of sugar free coke and a meal in the evenings. Coupled with my new gym membership I dropped down to 72kg (2.7% body fat). For someone who is 187cm and does actually have a large frame, I looked like a skeleton.
I modified my diet accordingly and juggled the time I spent at gym, I now eat 4 meals a day (low fat) and instead of a 2-hour gym sessions I now average 75 minutes (3xweek). I've increased in lean body weight and kept the fat down to a minimum, I now weigh 80kg. It's a way of life for me. I don't think twice about going to gym, when I miss a session I make it up later in the week.
Happy ending? I think not. There is a popular misconception that losing weight will get you the body that you desire. All those slim models they show you in those adverts were NEVER overweight. If your only motivation is to get a godlike body you are going to be sorely disappointed. The results? Loose skin. Stretch marks. If you had issues about your body beforehand, just wait until you see the skin hanging around your gut when you do push-ups
AHehHEhE
Calculate your BMR here, and eat less than that a day.
Take a multivitamin just to cover deficiencies, and then wait. 500 calories a day below your expenditure = 1 pound a week weight loss. I've lost 12 pounds in six weeks, I feel just fine, and I'm eating nothing but fast food. But hey, don't take my word for it, try it.
"Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
The big problem is not to gain this weight again.
The fastest you loose the fastest you gain again, so I'd
advise do it little by little. Stay away from yo-yo effects
and in the end change your habits:
- Eat more times a day (4-5) and eat less in every meal.
- Do some sport 2-3 days a week
Having the willpower to do this is the hardest part.think of food as fuel and not as something which is supposed to taste good.
Whould'nt this fail in improving the quality of your life?
FRA: STFU GTFO
Its mohole, as assron already has a meaning: a corporate officer who gets their million dolar bonuses whilst their company, a blue chip stock invested in heavily by pension funds, slides into bankruptcy due to their fiscal mismanagement and deception.
I am really curious to understand what the desperate, in need, or narcisistic common human thinks when he reads the terms "Low-Carb - Increased Fat"
or "Low-Fat, High-Carb" diets. It wouldn't surprise me to see an exageration in his interpretation directly proportional to the amount of psychological
pressure his weight puts on him. So far I 've read some of the comments, most of them interesting, but originating individuals finding themselves
in extreme circumstances, in some cases in need to lose over 100lbs. Furhtermore, no one has commented so far on the healthy rhythm in which the
weight should be lost. This depends on the severity of the case, but know that losing rapidly 50lbs may be more harmful to your cardiovasculary
system, both in the long and short terms, than keeping them. The question is both quality and the time in which the weight is lost. The human body
has been made in such a way to consume certain quantities of certain molecules, lowering or increasing the amounts, leads to a certain stress, which
is unavoidable under any type of weight losing (and sometimes weight gaining, there is that sort of diet too...) diet. How many of the people who
went on following a stric weight losing diet at least once in their lives have consulted a dietician (not a medic, as I believe it is not enough...)
before commencing it ? How many dietician plan and adjust the diet to the specific needs of the "patient" (from personal experience I can tell you
dissapointingly few...) ? Some highly toxic molecules (pesticides, poisons, organic toxins and so on...) are fat-soluble, which essentially means
that when you put on weight a significant quantity of those molecules gets stored along the fat in the adipocytes. Does anybody account for the damage
they may inflict if released too quickly ? Except from some hardcore-chemist, no medic will ever even know of this fact (which anyway overcomplicates
the issue and the patient-client may leave unsatisified...). Fat itself is rich source of free-radicals, depending on its origins, breaking down our
fat (which is animal of course...) leads to an overconcentration of the free-radical population in blood. Fat soluble vitamins (such as vitamin E)
and vitamin C among other molecules reduce the danger free-radicals pose to our cells. Diet is a very delicate issue, ranging from psychology (where
most of the times the basis of the weight problem may be found...) to ordinary common-sense chemitry and should balanced and well planned for the
particular individual who wishes to follow it. I would suggest, before visiting a dietician, visit a medic and do some endocrinological exam, if that
shows nothing suspicious and you still think you have a weight problem, go talk about it to a psychologist, then visit the dietician. Most times
the success of the diet does not depend on the diet itself, but on our attudute towards it and ourselves.
Hey America!
Why is it so hard to understand?
Get out of your car and walk somewhere for a change! And don't drive to the gym and *pay* to sit on a stationary bike for an hour... Get a real bike and go somewhere!
...which, when it comes down to it, is similar to the anorexics' diet; the difference being that here, the dieter is actually fat. "Eat much less" is a good simplification.
It worked very well for me. I lost ~50 pounds in 8 months or so. I gained it back when I lived in Germany for two months and had a lot of beer and bratwurst, but when I came back I decided to take a different approach. You see, while it worked very well, it had the effect of making me tired and weak much of the time. (Walker notes this in the book.) I'm losing weight again with "eat less, exercise more," but it's much slower.
There's a tradeoff here: do you want to lose weight quickly, or while keeping your strength?
Oh - I'm still using the tracking tools from The Hacker's Diet. They're a great motivator!
Sounds to me that you, and the girlfriend of the
author of the parent to your post should read the
article this thread is about. I had high
cholesterol and my wife had various hormonal issues
until we cut out the sugar and carbs. We now eat
mostly veges, meats and eggs and our health is far
better for it.
90% of the wealth is in 2% of the pockets. Bummer to be in the majority.
Try and find a food product in the grocery store today without corn oil/corn meal/corn starch/corn syrup/corn syrup solids/corn/corn/corn.
What we need is more spam - eggs and SPAM, bacon and SPAM, bacon eggs and SPAM, eggs SPAM and SPAM, SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM eggs and SPAM, SPAM SPAM SPAM....
FRA: STFU GTFO
In Japan and China you tend to walk your buns off as you walk between the nearest public transportation and your destination several times each day.
Same goes for most European capitols. When in such places for more than a week, I always lose weight.
This is at least a factor.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Perhaps for some people... And if your argument is that in full knowledge of your cholesterol level and having evaluated your vitamin and mineral intake and sodium/potassium balance etc etc you'd rather eat 2000 calories of fat than 2000 calories of vegetables.... well... enjoy!
If your argument is that you'll somehow magically shed those pounds if you stuff yourself with butter and beef, well you'll make grand and exquisite corpse.
The primary gist of my earlier statement was not to dis the atkins diet as written, my (shallow) analysis finds it not nearly so extreme, nor so remarkable, as most of the most vociferous partisans (on each side) seem to believe.
But I do strongly counter the arguments that somehow one can eat as much fat and protein as one wants so long as one avoids carbs and still lose weight. That's just a big fat lump of lard. (Not that you were making this argument, but many proponents seem to.)
And I find ludicrous the notion that it is a "better" diet (not in the losing weight sense but in the general nutrition sense). That is that fat is somehow more healthy than grains, (though this interpretation misstates the diets, which do not suggest forgoing all grains and vegetables, simply taking them in moderation).
Now, the argument that one who is already given in to snacking and accepted that the ready availability of junk food and the endless barrage of food advertising has overwhelmed whatever self control they may ever have possessed and there is no hope for moderation, then should the choice be between a snack of fat and protein and an equally caloric snack of refined sugar... the winner of that Hobson's choice is probably the fat and protein. (Of course if you really want to win snackers, you sell crunchy salty sugared fat chunks!)
Anecdotal evidence is intrinsically weak, but it's about all there is. Cultures that eat low fat, high carbohydrate diets (Asians especially, but also most third world countries) have low incidences of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, etc. The US eats more fat than anyone as a percentage of diet (and more refined sugar) and wins the wealthy death disease competition hands down. Vegetarians tend to be thin and relatively healthy, meat eaters tend to be fat.
One can argue (and Atkins et al would) that there are other causes at work - and certainly there are, but the health of the peoples of the world does not lend credence to a high fat diet.
Obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay are strongly associated with eating lots of sugar. Obesity and heart disease are statistically associated with eating a diet high in fat. Choose your poison. But you want to stay thin, eat less of it.
You've summarized the real concept well, and I don't really argue with it - some people might find its easier to get full with net callorically equal chunk-o-fat than a twinkie, and might not have any access to vegetables or lean meats.
But many proponents suggest that carbohydrates are the cause of obesity and heart disease. This is just bunk.
If so vegetarians should be HUGE, but their BMI (body mass index) is on average 1Kg/m2 less than meat eaters.
If so vegetarians should die of heart disease more frequently but the rate of ischaemic heart disease is 34% less in vegetarians.
If so vegetarians should have higher LDL:HDL ratios, but vegetarians have mean LDLs of 2.29 mmol/l vs meat eaters LDL of 3.17.
And consuming a diet high in animal fat vs. being a vegetarian yields a death rate ratio of 3.29 (95% CI).
Maybe it's easier to have one steak than one cake for some people, but a diet high in fat is not, compared to a "balanced diet" or vegetarian diet, in any way healthy. It is only - possibly - a good choice against the straw man argument of being better than eating a diet of refined sugar products.
5. An "Atkins diet without excess fat" (page 7) is a low-fat diet.
The Atkins diet is a low carbohydrate diet.
Low Carbs != (Low Carbs) && (Low Fat)
Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. - Yoda
And since your body cannot integrate calcium without magnesium the calcium in milk is damn near worthless.
Eat some spinach instead.
And while you are singing the praises of milk, keep in mind that it is suited to the nutritional needs of baby cows, not adult humans. Most adult humans are unable to digest lactose. Mightn't that be an indication that milk isn't actually all that good for you?
Horsefeathers. There is no evidence whatsoever that ingested cholesterol increases serum cholesterol levels. The cholesterol you eat is digested or passed. The cholesterol in your blood is made in your body - from carbohydrates.
I lived in Mexico for 2 years. I was in better shape than any time in my life. The only exercise I got, was walking a mile or two a day. Part of the lifestyle in the beach/resort town I lived in, was simply to drink beer and hang out all day. The big difference was that I had no stress. I ate some good food, but I also ate a lot of food that's not too good for you. Hot dogs (3 or 4 at a time), fried chicken or beef sandwiches.
At 5' 10", I weighed about 155. I returned to the states and very quickly put on 35-40 pounds. I had a high stress job that really caused problems, beyond just my weight. I'm now down to about 175 and slowly losing weight. How? I reduced the stress in my life. Yes, I'm eating a little better too, and exercising a bit, but not much.
At one point, when I was at my peak weight (and stress), I worked out hard, EVERY day, for about 2 months. I didn't lose a singe pound.
Maybe a stress-free life lends itself to a healthier lifestyle, but that's where I'd start. I'll be back to 155 in the next 2 months, if I can manage to keep the stress level low.
Ok, here goes my story...
;o)
I was way overweight (95kg), doing no sports and drinking too much.
So I decided to get my health back...
I started on a very strict diet (no crappy food like hamburger) which was mainly salad, pasta and with fish and chicken being the only meat... The trick there is to eat less and count the calories. My aim was to loose 2kg per month (1 pound a week) so I tried to eat for about 1500 calories a day.
Of course, I had to cut dramatically on alcohool (no more beer.)
After the first month, to keep motivation going, I joined a gym and started exercising (mainly cardio) for 1 hour 3 times a week.
I also did a lot of walking during the WE (the trick for that is: don't use your car!)
I gradually increased the gym workout (because I started liking it) and after about 8 month, I reached my ideal weight of 70kg.
Now, I am training about 1-2 hours a day (doing mostly running, cycling and swimming) and am running triathlons. I have never been as fit and really like my body (and apparently, so do women
My conclusion on all this is that what you really need is motivation. Eating a healthy diet and exercising helps a lot. Loosing weight and building up your body is a lengthy process, so you have to get yourself a goal and keep on working to reach it!
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.
hehe not a fat person yourself by any chance...
Incidentally, if you think I'm an obese person trying to explain away my condition, you're wrong. I'm completely fit, a little less than my ideal weight, and lead an active lifestyle.
Yeah and I'm a lonely teenage girl hanging about in chat rooms
Take a photo of yourself naked (do not post _please_). Weigh yourself. Get the flu badly. Don't eat for a week. Test your urine for ketones (or just look at it, it should be almost brown, yecch!).
You are in (and have been for a few days)ketosis. Look at the amount of weight you have lost. Now if your _really_ had the flu for a week, you did _no_ exercise and you ate no calories (well virtually none). Sure you would expect to lose weight but if you do the maths you will find that you have lost much more than that from the food you did not eat. Look at your old picture. Look at the difference. It is that simple.
Look, you can argue over the relative merits of long term low carb diets all you like, but the physiology of the human body is plain for all to see. No carbs == ketosis. Ketosis == "massive fat loss". It's just chemistry. It's not controversial.
What is controversial, and it is the subject of the article, is whether a long term strategy of low carbohydrate intake is a good thing or not. I am finding it more and more persuasive, it does seem to make sense to me from a chemistry/physics perspective that carbs aren't as good for the human metabolism as we might have thought. But regardless. Ketosis is a great way to lose fat.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
If your looking for a cause, there are many more starving people in the world.
At least that's not self inflicted
Looking for explanations or for excuses for the overweight people?
Turning people into victims gives them an excuse.
They have no will power, they were brought up to eat KFC buckets to themselves, their parents owned 5 cars so they never had to walk to school so they are not used to exercise. They were never taught that eating 20 hambers a day is fattening. ye gads.
It's just headonism, full stop.
Would they run back into a burning building to get their burger? er no. So what's stopping them doing that if not will power. oh yes, you might argue that fear of death counteracts the need for the burger which has been with us from when we were runnig away from tigers; but what about fear of a massive heart attack?
what you mean my marathon running is pointless without lifting weights, oh dear
Ah, argument by authority. Now that's real science!
I wouldn't recommend it for the long haul.
This January, I went on a modified Atkins diet. I only let myself have 40-60g of Carbos a day, for two to four weeks. Then upped that to about 100g a day for the remaining three weeks of the diet.
Also, I was doing 400-500 calories of Cardio four times a week, along with muscle building resistance training twice a week. In that time, I managed to lose four inches off my waist, and like 15 pounds, within the first two or three weeks.
But I fell back into some bad habits, and while I have not gained more than a few pounds, an a half inch on my waist, the gainback is there. So for the next two weeks, I am going to do Atkins hardcore. No more than 18-20g a day, with daily exercise. And drink plenty of water, Atkins is kinda rough on the kidneys....
I have to tell you folks, I don't know how people stay on Atkins as a lifelong thing. The prepared food (shakes and bars) are highway robbery in price, and I have never become sick of meat and cheese so quickly in my life. Also, it's very difficult to eat out, or so I've found. Atkins is great as a short-term, quick burnoff of fat and inches, but I would suggest that you then go onto a much more sensible diet before too long.
Also, one of the reasons Atkins is doable is because it's so easy to get vitamins and the ALL-IMPORTANT digestive enzymes you need to do this diet without too many immediate ill-effects. thirty years ago that would have been a lot harder, I imagine.
One other thing: I have recently come across what appears to be the perfect Atkins food. My wife-to-be introduced me to seitan, which is this kind of textured wheat gluten stuff. It has the bite and texture of beef, and soaks up whatever sauce it's in like a sponge. Very tasty if you are used to meat, and your average, meal sized package of it has 7.5g of carbs, about 20 to 30g of protein, and zero fat. Hard to find in a lot of places, but well worth it...
First, thanks for pointing out the CNN article. The responses from the researchers discredit the Atkins diet. They talk about good fat and good carbs. "Enter the Zone" by Sears talks about the same things. Atkins is more anti-carb than Sears. Sears says to reduce the high glycemic carbs (pastas, breads, sugars) and to have fruits & veggies instead. Sears pushes the omega 3 fats (as found in fish) just like the researchers in the CNN article. Sears other main point is to eat all meals and snacks in the same proportion of protein, carbs, & fats to control your insulin levels.
I am just rereading "Enter the Zone" because I have gained some weight since I stopped following it's guidelines. I had lost 40 pounds and kept it off for 4 years. I got lazy and started eating take out too much. I also switched from Diet soda to regular. I gained weight. So I know if I go back to my eating habits I had I will start losing 1 to 1.5 lbs a week and not be hungry. I just have to spend more time cooking...
I have a problem with the contention, seen here and elsewhere, that Asian diets are low-fat and high-carbohydrate. Which planet's Asia are you talking about?
My experience as a cook has been that Japanese and Chinese food is low-carbohydrate, fairly high-fat. Lots and lots of vegetables, and everything either deep-fried or stir-fried--and anyone who tells you stir-fry is low-fat is seriously confused. It's only lower fat than deep-frying; that isn't much. The only high-carbohydrate aspect is the use of white rice, and that is a raw grain, not a processed, refined, sweetened flour product. It has more of the fiber that slows down carbohydrate uptake as described in the article. Noodles and various wraps are those "evil" high-carb processed foods, but they are anywhere near as much of the cuisine as vegetables and rice.
In short, two major Asian cuisines are medium to high fat, low carbohydrate.
Indian cuisine is almost all vegetables and fruit dishes with a few pastries. Again, low-carb.
Which Asian cuisines were you talking about?
---dragoness
Cuba claims all sort of crap that just isn't true. Ever tried to discuss anything with a Cuban official? The party line must be "we execede you in every way with fewer resources."
Joe
Joe Batt Solid Design
Go on, mod me down, you insensitive clods... I don't care. My quality of life is still *much* better than before I started using; you don't know what you've got until you lose it - and thanks to the wonders of buprenorphine you can get it back again.
And if anyone knows has a friend with a problem (some of you do, but just don't realise it...) point them to your country's Subutex programme. Methadone is SO dead (and good riddance!) Oh, and of course, *never* shoot. That's a mug's game.
Enjoy...
In authentic (i.e. not Westernized) Asian dishes, rice comprises the overwhelming bulk of the dish (hence high carbohydrates). In most authentic (i.e. not Westernized) Indian food, again rice comprises a large portion of the meal, coupled with (wonderful) breads. It is only when these meals are modified for the West that the meat content goes up (because we traditionally define our meal by the meat), the fat content goes up, and the carbohydrate content goes down. BTW: Vegetables and fruits are largely carbohydrates.
But he doesn't use any magical diets, just common sense. You have to consume less calories than you burn to lose weight. High intensity training does not burn fat, only long duration, low intensity training (such as power walking) will do the trick. High intensity training is only useful for increasing performance.
The diet is the key (and by diet I mean nutrition plan, not food intake reduction). Here's the deal:
Reduce carb intake A lot of people have mentioned reducing carb intake, and they're right. Unused carbohydrates are almost as bad as fats; they're metabolized and stored as fats if unused. I'm at 200 lbs, and I have the equivalent of 3 bagels a day, that's it.
Eliminate gratuitous fats and refined sugar Fat is essential to any diet, since several vitamins are fat soluble, but you have more than enough fat in your protein if you eat meat. Refined sugar is quickly metabolised into fat, something you want to avoid to lose weight.
Reduce protein Unless you're weight lifting 5 times a week, you don't need that much protein. 12 oz a day is more than enough, which is about two small chicken breasts.
Reduce fruits Fruits are loaded with simple carbohydrates, which the body can easily metabolise into fats (almost to the extent of refined sugar), but they're also high in vitamins and minerals. You want to have your fruits in the morning, to give you quick energy, but avoid them like the plague later in the day, unless you have a particularly tough workout that night.
Eats vegetables. Lots of them They fill you up, give you lots of vitamins and minerals, and balance your diet out. They're essential to losing fat, since they're required to break down fat cells. Exercising without eating vegetables is about as useful as not exercising at all.
I know the above looks like you're not eating much. But I normally can't eat all the food I'm supposed to. And it isn't bland either. You can eat pretty much anything you want, since fat is usually introduced during food preparation (cooking everything in butter or oil, etc).
Of course, you should speak to a professional trainer. Doctors can give decent advice, but they're no where near as efficient and as motivated as a personal trainer to help you lose weight or increase performance.
The coach also does Internet training:
Technosport
(Note: His main page is down right now, which is why I'm including a deep link).
Nat
umn the science behind the adkins diet is RIGHT ON.
Oh, it is? Wow, you'd better call up the scientific community, most of which largely calls it a sham : Apparently they're not aware that the magical "alternate metabolic path" (gag) of the Atkins diet is such a revolution.
My God, I just realized something! Red foods are the cause of all of our problems! I hereby launch the "Crimson Diet", and its regiment is to avoid any food that is red, and to tap your right ear 4 times at the crack of noon. The science is that red foods contain harmful obesitosins that are proven causative agents of obesity. Additionally, the psycho-eatomatic response increases 67.2% in the presence of red food. I've found that the transverse alternate intra-circulatory enzyme system is diverted clusteringly when red food is avoided, and this helps the dieter live at the peak of health.
P.S. I have noticed in this discussion that there is a grossly unbalanced moderation at play (anyone saying "eat right be healthy" gets moderated down, or skipped, and those saying "oh, poor poor me! Me and my thyroid condition just can't help it" gets a 5. How absurd, and shameful).
The low carb diets have SCIENCE at their root. They come from an understanding of the blood sugar mechanisms, and what causes the body to burn fat.
The "low fat" died it not at ALL based on science, but based on the food pyramid that the government made the way it is BECAUSE of heavy lobbying from the food industry. They pyramid, if I remember correctly, started out as a private recommendation from one of the industry groups, and the government later adopted it. It was NEVER based on any science.
And the "low fat" idea is simply that "fat is what causes the problem, therefore you shouldn't eat it."
And of course, this ignores the fact that your body needs fat in its diet-- not getting fat in its diet causes it to retain fat, not burn it.
So, the "low fat" diet isn't even *logical* if you know how the body processes food.
This is why we need to get the government COMPLETELY out of the medical business (And I include quasi government groups like the AMA.)
The FDA has destroyed drug research, and blocked people from getting good drugs for their desieses. (For instance, a drug may be approved for people with a heart problem, its safe in humans, but its ILLEGAL to proscribe that drug to someone for depression, without going thru another 10 years to get approval for that, despite the fact that there's no evidence that the drug is harmful and has been used for decades by a wide variety of people, etc.) People have the right to take the drugs they think will help them. Its a HUMAN RIGHT.
And the AMA destroyed the medical industry by making it impossible to tell anyone whether you liked your doctor or not without getting sued-- so bad doctors don't get a bad rap and malpractice suits are the result.
this is more evidence that the government fucks up everything it touches, and the only solution for liberty-- including your rights online, and the right to write your own software-- is to get a smaller government and get it out of the business of controlling peoples lives.
The fact that they've been giving us bad dietary advice for the last 50 years is inexcusable. (The "Low Carb" diet was discovered and researched in the lat 1800s.)
Its time to get the government out of science and let people do what's right for them, based on science.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Fruits and vegetables are healthy? Well, you're half right.
People eating fruit to loose weight might as well be eating hershy bars... they taste better and are the same thing, dietetically.
That you don't know this shows how "obvious" it really is, and why the "common knowledge" is actually anti-scientific.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Any diet at all needs a book full of really quick (like 5-minute) recipes, with 3 or 4 ingredients plus spices and such.
Most diet books assume that you, the fat person, are a dedicated food-lover with a kitchen full of ingredients and two or three hours at least to waste assembling complicated dishes.
Pfah.
Anybody know of a source of recipes like this? Doesn't have to be for a weight-loss diet. Heck if there was just one for balanced that would be OK.
I've been caffiene-free for several years now, but have a fair amount of experience in kicking the addiction. When you stop drinking, about the time you would crave another coffee/coke/whatever, start taking [aspirin/Tylenol/your favorite headache pill] before the headaches start. Take it as directed every n hours; it will seriously cut down the intensity of the withdrawal headaches. Second, resign yourself to the fact that you are going to be depressed, exhausted and very sleepy for a few days; don't go back to the caffiene to fix it or you will have wasted all the pain you just went through. Just ride it out; it'll be over with in a few days.
Once you've been free and clear of caffiene for a while, you'll notice that you sleep a lot better now, too, but you can't pull those all-nighters without--surprise!--getting sleepy and tired. Yes, now you're a normal human being, not a speed addict. Get a good night's sleep regularly, or you may have problems with fatigue and depression.
Watch out for caffiene hidden in soft drinks that you don't expect to have it, because you will find that you are very sensitive to caffiene once you've been off it for a while--that built-up tolerance went away, and one can of caffienated soda will keep you awake half the night--and give you a headache 3 days later.
I never could taper off. If I reduced my caffiene intake at all, I got withdrawal headaches.
---dragoness
Agreed.
I've been on Atkins for over 2 years now. I lost sixty pounds in the first six months, and have enjoyed it so much that I haven't stopped! I eat all I want, and don't get that bloated post-Thanksgiving feeling. I don't get bad days where you feel exhausted. My $BODYFUNCTION is 100% better, and I don't have problems unless I skip out on the diet for Christmas, Birthday, or Vacation.
That said, the diet is not for everybody. I've suggested it to people that have tried and failed. One poor guy had violent diarrea while he was on it... Most people simply have a hard time grasping the concept of no sugar/potatoes/flour. My mother-in-law still offers me a noodle sandwich with fries and a shake.
It's also very expensive. Consider replacing your bread with ground beef, and your noodles with chicken. Enough said.
Eating out isn't very bad, if you have the self control. Most decent restaurants (in the US) have a chicken salad, that is great if you drop the croutons.
So count me as a vote for Low Carb. Especially as a six-month-must-lose-XX-pounds-at-any-cost.
Check out Atkins Friends for support.
Make money with Real Estate Investing
One study says "cut out fat." Another says, "cut out carbs." The real problem is that "diet" food is making Americans fat. That stuff is doped up to keep people using it!
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
I was fat growing up. I was chubby at age 5. I weighed 140 pounds in the sixth grade. My parents gave me unlimited access to candy, ice cream, cookies, and soda... how was I to know what it would do to me? So I never really had a point where I was thin and I noticed that I was getting pudgy.
I'm losing fat now by eating 3 normal meals a day with no desserts and drinking only water. It's slow, but it's also something I can maintain without going crazy. I'm probably not the only person who never hit the "Oh damn I'm getting fat" stage because I grew up used to carrying the extra weight.
Atkins Diet= No Carbs.
Why people spend years of their lives discussing this simple fact amazes me. Tons of books, many websites, supplements and many other products all boiled down to two words: No carbs.
Let me make it a little more explicit, no carbohydrates. What's the freaking problem here? Can I drink this? Can I eat this? Can I use this? Answer: Does it have carbs?
I've done this diet several times. It works. You don't eat carbs, you loose weight. Everyone I know who does it also reports great results. People who eat no carbs for breakfast, no carbs for lunch, but then a big pile of potatoes for dinner, well, it does NOT work for them.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
I am Type 2 diabetic. I started exercising once I found out, and a couple of friends got me into triathlon. I never lost a lot of weight (started at 6'1" 240), but did get more fit. I lost down to 225, but still was "large".
I tried Atkins, and found that it was hard to do, as the rest of my family still ate carb heavy meals. The eggs & bacon breakfasts were especially good though!
I noticed that when I came off of the Atkins diet, my aerobic capacity was much (10-15%) higher. My HR was lower for the same intensity (speed) workout running and biking. IANAD, but I feel as though some "switch" was reset in my aerobic engine that processed carbs & fat more efficiently. BTW, that is the last thing that I need - I need inefficiency to lose weight.
I will probably try the Atkins-type diet again soon. I lost weight (~10lbs) before I got off of it. I will have to cook my own meals this time to stay on it.
I think that it is important to drink plenty of water with the diet, especially if you are exercising. Atkins strongly recommends that in his book. Also, Atkins recommends giving up caffeine, which might not work for slashdotters.
There's much more to this than just fat vs. carbohydrates. Just think about what has changed since, oh, 1970:
* High fructose corn syrup is now in everything.
* Huge portions of grocery stores are devoted to microwave-type meals. Back in 1970, you just had TV dinners, which were pretty much a novelty.
* Diet soft drinks containing artificial sweeteners, the long-term effects of which are unknown, have become a multi-billion dollar industry.
* The fast food industry has gotten much larger. It's no longer just McDonald's, Burger King, and Hardees, but dozens and dozens of huge chains.
* There has been a large increase in the number of antibiotics and hormones used in meat and dairy animals.
* Partially-hyrdrogenated vegetable oils are now found in everything.
There are too many factors to make this clear-cut.
Hershey bars do not taste better than fruit. They have a more powerful taste.
People are spoiled by the flavor enhancers and junk in junk food and think that they taste better when really they just have a more overwhelming taste.
I suppose you have some scientific evidence indicating hershey bars are the same thing dietetically as fruit? Because everything I ever heard indicated that fruit provides way more satisfaction per calorie and is an asset in healthful eating and in losing weight.
Coding Blog
Ask a bodybuilder. These people annually drop themselves down to what looks like less than 1% body fat for the contest season. If anyone would know how to drop the pounds, it's these people.
BlackGriffen
I move for a vote of no-confidence in NYTimes for making us register.
"Failure of Windows operating systems is extremely rare. If it happens, it is usually due to operating system file c
The brain can only use glucose (basic 6 carbon sugar) for food/fuel
Carbohydrates are stored in the muscle and liver and require a healthy amount of water to stay there
When dietary carbohydrates go down, so do the storage carbohydrates in the muscle and liver due to need. Water is not needed to keep glucose there, so it goes down the chute
When the body's glucose levels drop down too much, protein is broken down to make glucose, and the process results in a lot of ammonia that the body seems to think is toxic
Fats are not converted to glucose in the body
Oxidation of fat in the body is dependant on glucose
Condsidering the above the only weight loss that is realistic on a low carb diet is protein and water. As a certified personal trainer, I can't make that reccommendation in good conscience. I've been treated in an emergency room for dehydration and it was not a great experience for me or my family. I wouldn't reccommend doing anything that would raise that risk. Also, since muscles require a lot of kilocalories to maintain themselves (or muscle burns more calories than fat), I wouldn't reccommend doing anything that reduces muscle mass.
High carbohydrate diets do not cause diabetes. Diabetes is not so simple to be caused by any one thing. Obesity and sedentary lifestyles are much stronger causes of diabetes than carbohydrates. If you also consider that carbohydrate foods are low in fiber, which plays a favorable role on blood sugar, low carb diets may be a more reliable cause than high carbs. Also consider that insulin levels go DOWN during exercise. This is because the rythmic contraction of muscles during exercise milks the glucose out of the blood. This is why a sedentary lifestyle is so bad. You rely solely on insulin to shuttle glucose out of the blood. After so much use and abuse, it might give out
The big problem with American obesity is not what we're eating; the problem is how much we are eating. A calorie is a calorie and 3500 too much will put one pound on you. Add inactivity to the equation and there you have it. Self control and exercise are generally sufficient in a healthy population to lose weight. The problem is that there are many other factors involved that might prevent weight loss. Successful weight loss takes work. Otherwise the plan is a fly by night operation and they will laugh all the way to the bank as the pounds come back on after the initial weight loss.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
If you want to lift for full body mass, lift for full body mass. Pay no attention to the kids who do 100 sets of chest and bicep exercises for each 10 sets of back and leg work. A good gym will have a squat rack and/or a decent leg press, hamstring curls, leg extension machines, and calf raise stuff (even if it's just a step and some heavy dumbells).
Now, as a woman, I can point out at least one reason why this won't work like that for at least most women. Water retention can change someone's weight dramatically, and to have this happening cyclically will screw up your charts. There are other reasons why I don't think this will work if you have goals like retaining or increasing your strength/fitness, but that's by the wayside. Point being, I find this rather ill-researched and possibly quite dangerous. Then again, I don't diet, but I've taken the too-much-martial-arts and my body didn't give me much of a choice on what to eat, which made the whole thing a lot simpler. (BURRITO! NOW!) Lea
I tried the Atkins diet about two years ago, for about a year. The results?
I lost about 40 pounds in the first six months. Of this, I put about 15 back on over the next six, for a net 1 year loss of 25 pounds. Additionally, my cholesterol dropped about 10% (I don't remember the numbers, unfortunately). I also stopped getting migraine headaches (probably due to a food allergy to something cut out by the diet).
So why in the world did I leave the diet? Several reasons, but mostly because I found it absolutely impossible to get out of the plateau I was in. No matter how strictly I adhered to the diet, my weight remained the same.
I'm now pursuing a low-cal diet in combination with a pretty heavy workout schedule. I think the reality may be that metabolisms are extremely complex systems, and aside from out and out starvation, there's no one simple approach to losing weight.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
I was a bit (well maybe more than a bit) overweight. My morning routine was to get up at seven, go down to my car and move it from the schoolyard (where I park over night because it's free) to the regular parking lot. Pop in a coin, go up to my flat and have breakfast, shower, brush teeth and then drive to work.
The only thing I've changed today is that before I go move my car, I put on trainer clothes, and when the car is moved I walk fast and/or run for 15 minutes (depending on my mood). You only need to walk or run in a pace that makes you breath a little heavier and sweat some. No heavy running in the morning! Thats bad for you.
Be sure to do this every workday. Do not eat breakfast before you walk/run. But you should always drink some water before exercising of course. What happens is that your body burns fat, because you havent inserted any other energy. And it also gives you a higher metabolism through the whole day. It starts up the engine so to speak.
Yep that was it! Hard isnt it? I've lost both my big lovehandles from this, and I dont miss them a bit! Neither do the chicks... And yes, you can start doing this tomorrow morning. ;-)
More tips (if you can spare more than two minutes):
- Drink water. I'm a drinker and I drink all day. It helps keeping "the engine" up and running, and I get no headaches. But I do have to go to the bathroom more often. But I think that is a good thing, because it keeps me from sitting in front of the computer for too long periods of time.
- Eat less fat. I dont eat much fat simply because I dont like fatty food very much, and even less nowdays when I'm fit.
- Another advice in form of a wordsay: In the morning eat like a king. At lunch eat like a prince. In the evening eat like a beggar. Don't eat big meals after 6pm.
- If you are hungry at night, eat a little and drink some water, then go back to bed and wait ten minutes. If you are still very hungry and cannot sleep, eat/drink some more and wait ten minutes. If you eat alot at once the body will not "note" the added energy in time, and you will eat too much.
Finally, an a bit off topic Darwinistic reflection:The desire too eat to much (IMHO of course) is something that traces back to the days when we lived in caves, and it was good Darwinism to kill weaker people in the flock and eat as much as possible when there was an oppurtunity to do so. Those who had these agressive and appetite genes survived and breed, and hence we have them in our geene pool. Nowdays our environment have changed, and killing "weaklings" and eat too much is certainly not something that adds to our chances of survival. If you want to be a good Darwinist and pass on your wonderful genes today you need to be able to do the opposite! Eat less, be friendly, and also of course have the desire and skill to nail lots of girls. But mankind have finally fooled Darwin in a way - me for example is very happy with making love using a condom, and therefore my genes will perish. Well, one day I will have a family because that is something I want in life. But the true "darwinistical surivivors" today is men that have unprotected sex with lots of whomen that have the capability to raise babies on their own, not caring about AIDS and venerial desease. Their genes will be the geene pool of tomorrow wheter we like it or not. But life isn't all about genes. Or is it? I sure like mine, and I also think mankind would have use of them when I'm done with them...so lets start shagging and leave the girl with a newborn on her hands for anotherone!...no wait...thats immoral and selfish...doh! Guess mankind have to do without my dna. You'll probably make it anyway
Over n out. /Patrix
My brother in law is in medical school and he was telling me that the official proven methods to reduce plaque in the arteries is
Dr. Atkins Diet and
Dr. Dean Ornish diet.
but what is interesting is the complete contradiction of methods.
Ornish recommends a plant based vegetarian diet
and Atkins recommends high protein and low carb diet
I did the Protein Power low carbohydrate diet in sympathy with my wife who wanted to lose some weight (she lost about 25 lbs on it).
On the plus side, I lost about 10-12 pounds of what very little fat I had, dropping down to probably just under 10% body fat. My cholesterol levels were excellent. (I must admit that I like fish and don't particularly like butter, so I didn't go overboard on the saturated fats.)
After the first week or two, my lean muscle mass picked up and my weightlifting ability increased slightly (after having plateaued for years).
The down sides of this regimen are
"Provided by the management for your protection."
-- null
But the original post is dead on in many ways.
The problem with the Atkins diet is that it, like the basic low-fat diet, tries to supply a magic bullet by targeting a single source.
Modern research does not support the utlility of a basic low-fat diet. There are different kinds of fats, and they have different effects. The problem, however, is that no research supports the long-term healthiness of the Atkins diet either.
It's not that prior research was "wrong" and mislead people into eating carbs. People did start eating more low-fat foods. But they didn't eat less food overall, and keep on eating many of high-fat foods they do, while increasing their carb intake.
Increasing obesity in the US is not due to an increased percentage of carbs in the diet. That's a joke and a lie of Atkins. It's due to an overall failure to decrease caloric intake, an overall decrease in activity, and an overall failure to truly eliminate trans-fat/saturated fats from the diet.
All of the research is pretty consistent about supporting three things: (1) exercise, (2) eat lots of plants, and (3) decrease trans-fats, saturated fats, and simple carbs. Do you really think people do this? No, and that's ther reason the obesity rate is shooting through the roof. Americans did not suddenly drop all the fat from their diets in 1993 and replace it with carbs. They just added low-fat foods. Replacing and adding are two different thigns.
Another thing: people here on Slashdot seem to be confusing two things--losing weight and eating healthily. Just because a diet causes you to lose weight over the course of a few weeks or months doesn't mean it's good in the long term. I suspect the Atkins diet falls into this category, as it eliminates many foods that are necessary or even crucial to a healthy diet.
Americans are always looking for a quick simple fix, and the truth is that there isn't one. It's not about having a healthy diet, it's about having a healthy lifestyle, which means diet and exercise. We don't like to be told that all those foods we like (like meat and donuts) are bad for us, and so we succumb to the belief that if we eliminate one of these entirely, we'll be okay. The truth is more subtle, and is somewhere more around that we can eat that steak every so often, and that donut every so often, but only so often, and not just in our heads, but really truly every so often.
In this regard, I have a challenge: show me a person who really truly eats, as a lifestyle, the requisite percentage of plant foods, without extra trans-fats, saturated fats, or sugars, and who exercises, and is obese. Aside from people who have metabolic disorders, you won't find any. I can find plenty of people on low-fat or low-carb diets, though, who are.
There is a big difference between ketosis (Atkins diet result)with ketoacidosis (diabetic kidney danger).
1. 'You don't eat vegetables.'
Actually, you can (and do) eat lots of green leafy vegetables like lettuce, broccoli, spinach, green beans, etc and soy beans. These are all low in NET carbohydrates. You only have to avoid corn since it is really a grain that is high in carbs.
2. 'You only lose water and have no energy.'
I've lost 15 lb's of FAT and my energy level is great. My weight is now stable but I stay on the diet just for the energy.
If you're tired of being fat try a low carb diet for a month. Limit yourself to I actually follow the Eades' program of 'Protein Power' which is a modified Atkin's diet.
Yup. We didn't reach the top of the food chain just to eat grass.
I'm 6'2". I went from 210lbs to 155lbs in 6 months. I lost 5lbs a week for the first month. I've been at 155 lbs for a year. I am 35 years old and now weigh what I did when I graduated high school.
;-).
Weight watchers boils down to counting calories, penalizing fat and rewarding fiber.
The point formula goes like this:
points = calories/50 + fat grams/12 - fiber grams/5.
(You won't see that formula in their literature. I had to figure it out from their point calculator thingy by playing around with it. Now watch them sue me for violating the DMCA
Although fruit has a lot of calories, it also has a lot of fiber, so the point value of fruit is smaller than you would think if you simply counted calories. Basically 1 cup of fruit is 1 point (that is true of cherries, strawberries, and grapes. An average apple or orange is 1 point also).
I was eating 35 points a day when I started (roughly 1500 calories) and I have been maintaining my weight eating 45 to 50 points a day (more like 2500 calories).
What I have noticed about dieting is that there is a big difference between being hungry and feeling like you'd like to eat something. That is why controlling your portion size is so effective. If you just follow your appetite, you'll eat until you are stuffed.
You'd be suprised how little food it takes to stop feeling hungry, if you can pry the fork out of your fingers after a modest portion.
You basically need to fill your life with interesting, engaging activities so you don't rely on food so much to be happy. If you do that, and only eat enough food to stop feeling hungry, you'll lose weight and be a lot happier person at the same time.
I think the biggest reason Americans are gaining weight is that they are using food to manage stress.
So let me get this straight: Doctors and researchers kept insisting for 3 fricken decades that the solution to weight-loss was to reduce the amount of fat in one's diet, and repeatedly rejected the chance to research any alternative hypotheses, yet there was almost *zero* evidence to support this hypothesis even after 6 studies were done.
Want to know that that reminds me of?
OOP
oop.ismad.com
(Go ahead and mod me down, oh proofless one. Atkins would also have been modded down in his day. He was a "troll" to the establishment.)
Table-ized A.I.
Ok like everyone I know in this business, I was overweight. I needed help.
Low carb-High protien-Moderate exercise
I did this plan for 12 months. I lost 60lbs and have reached my target weight. I have added beer back into my diet.
I have tried everything and this is what works.
I lost 20 lbs on a low fat diet and gained 30 back.
This "diet" is not something that can change after you finish. You must modify what you eat.
It's not what's in the Whopper, it's what that whapper is in. Bread...and of course fries.
I used to love whoppers....mmmmmm whopper.
The way to lose weight is by expending more calories than are consumed. Period. Any diet is a restriction on the intake of food, and thus, many diets, even if unhealthy, may produce weight loss.
:)
Your anecdotal experience does not prove that low-carb diets are superior, since I can contradict your anecdote with mine
I had been chronically obese for my entire life, until about a year ago, when I decided to do something about it. My diet adheres roughly to the food pyramid recommendations (except that I eat more vegetables), just because that's what I like to eat. That means most of my calories come from COMPLEX carbohydrates (whole grains). I stay away from sugary foods, since those are the source of many calories without nutrition.
I have lost 120 lbs (down to 160) on my self-prescribed low fat diet.
I have several family members who are using Weight Watchers, which is usually a low-fat plan, and all of them have been successful at losing weight, and keeping it off.
So be careful of anecdotal evidence. These studies are calling for research to determine the relative merits and dangers of different dietary choices, and that proper scientific inquiry will answer which choices are generally better, not our anecdotal back-and-forth!
My parents who are diabetics clued me into an artificial sweetner called Splenda (http://www.splenda.com) that was recommended by the ADA. It is basically a modified sugar molecule so it has a taste almost identical to real sugar with no aspartame after-taste but the body does not covert it as such. Unfortunately for some unknown reason there are few products that use this sweetner. My favorite however is Diet Rite cola (http://www.dietritecola.com/) It's incredibly inexpensive (compared to real coke) and tastes very much like the real thing. Look for it at your grocery store, it's great stuff !! Getting rid of sugary cola's from my diet combined with light cardio has allowed me to drop from 185lbs to 165lbs without much effort.
I ran accross an article that showed that people that donate blood tend to have fewer heart and stroke problems than people that don't. Some of the studies show that donating just once a year keeps iron levels down. They went on to discuss iron levels vs hear attacks in men vs women.
Now the people I know that give blood frequenly tend to be in good heath and none of them seem to be over weight so I thought I would look in to this some more. What I found is there could be a number of reasons:
1) Iron levels. Its not convincing.
2) The kind of people that give blood aren't the kinds to get worked up over stilly stuff. Lower stress.
3) Oil change? Water and alcohol can move in and out of the system with ease but other things can't. To some toxins it seems to be a closed system.
4) bad spirits? They used to use leaches to suck the bad sprints out of people and there was quite a bit of scientific papers about the practace for the time. I don't know what they did with the drunk leaches.
The Red Cross seeems to have some info about why giving bloodis good for you but its not convincing. One thing I did find is one blood bank said they don't like to promote the healt benifits because it draws the wrong kind of people.
So, the less calories you intake, the less free radicals your cells produce, and the slower you age.
Personally, I'd rather live a few years less and eat for a higher state of happiness, by the way.
*laugh* I don't believe you. Fruits contain lots of sugar, which in excess isn't good for the body. But they've also got other vitamins and nutrients that a hershey bar doesn't. On the other hand, a hershey bar has things that fruits don't, like chocolate. ;) It comes down to a balance between what your body needs and what your brain wants. Ask a kid halloween night if they care about what their body wants. Hell, ask me around halloween time.
And, taste is a matter personal opinion, and fact. Some people like the taste of fruits better to candy bars. However, I don't think i've meet a person that likes the taste of broccoli better than candy. But I know you're out there! Show yourself freaks!!!
It's rampant in every quarter of systems analysis. When the stock market falls, commentators never let it pass without ascribing a cause ("Greenspan said this, The market got scared by a minor news event, etc"). We say these things as if we really have a handle on things. "If only this hadn't happened, that wouldn't have happened." We see it in various groups that attempt to prognositcate the future of the population, the environment, fashion trends, etc, and diet is nothing different. It's naive to think that because we see a few relationships between carbohydrates and insulin that we've mapped out metabolism. There are thousands of interacting systems at work in the body. It's the ultimate 3-body problem that we can only really analyze in probabilities. Saying with finality that the Atkin's diet works though such and such mechanism is like that goof you know who thinks he understands quantum physics because he saw a blurb about it on the Discovery channel. Worse yet, it's that goof making authoritative statements about the nature of the universe based on the 2 premises he understands. As such, beyond blunt trauma and a few dozen well isolated conditions, medical science is a long way from truly understanding and curing the majority of ailments (and alternative medicine benefits from that, despite it's similar inefficacy). :)
Anyway. I'mone of the people who can't *gain* weight, so I'm fine.
Holy shit, we should talk some time.
> There was a recent study correlating lifelong use of Soy (in particular, Tofu) with earlier onset of Alzheimers.
The study to which you're (probably) referring actually tracked Japanese men living in Hawaii who ate a "traditional Japanese diet" vs. those who adopted an "Americanized" diet.
What they neglected to mention was that a traditional Japanese diet is high in seafood. Fish contain the highest levels of environmental contaminants (PCBs, DDT, mercury, heavy metals, dioxin, etc.) of any meat product. It gets concentrated all the way up the fish-eat-fish foodchain until it's at a toxic level in the big fish that humans eat.
These chemicals, in sufficient concentration, have been demonstrated to cause all the ill effects listed in the study. The mainland-diet people eating pigs and cows (animals who eat a grain-based diet, also including soybeans) weren't exposed to those water-borne contaminants, which occur at trace levels in water but are five or more orders of magnitude more concentrated in marine life.
The meat and dairy industries, who are worried about soy impacting their bottom line (indeed, a number of soy milk/fake meat companies have recently been bought by meat processors) seized upon this singular study and said, "Aha! Soy causes brain damage!" (Even the FDA has issued advisories against eating big fish, especially for pregnant women, and especially against eating it frequently -- but tofu got the blame in this study.)
Incidentally, hemp seeds could be used like soy (high protein, ground into tvp for fake meats, THC removed) if it were made legal.
I know that diets are inherently problematic because they set you up to fail.
First of all, everytime you eat something "not on the diet" you get a feeling of failure, and the more you get the feeling, the worse you feel, the more you want to eat to feel better.
Second, diets lower metabolism and when you go off the diet you may still eat less but you gain the wieght right back because your body has a lower metabolism overall.
Atkins diet is very good because it does not lower metablosim like other diets (slim fast, etc). I aided this with some metabo-life type pills and it helped me lose weight.
I find that you should only diet 3 days a week, and eat normal the other 4 days (or reverse). Otherwise, when you are at your ideal weight and go back to the "maintain" mode you will gain your fat back.. if you keep your body GUESSING as to the amount of food (gorge even occasionally) your body will NOT lower its metablosm.. heck it may even speed it up!
For every pound = 1 point of colesterol = 2 points of tryglycerides = 1/2 point of bad colesterol = 1 ounce of feel better.
Consider that when you lose 15 pounds.. thats a heavy bowling ball (try picking one up) and really understand that your body is carrying around at least 10 of those bowling balls for a 150 pound person, and 20 for a 300 pound person. Every bowling ball lost is an extra spring in your step, an extra day of life, and extra bit of self-esteem.
Oh.. and in the end, you wont have to pay double fares on Airlines anymore!!
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
I recall reading that one of the obvious effects of weight loss is that your body begins using your fat reserves, which entails the introduction of more fat into your bloodstream. Rapid weight loss then puts you at much greater risk of atherosclerosis, since the lipids responsible for part of that process are flowing around in greater quantities.
I bet. I know the same has happened to people who have adopted a vegan diet. Which is odd, because when you look at it, the Atkins diet and a vegan diet are stark opposites. However, both touch upon something similar, which I'll be damned if I know what it is.
You might be experiencing a reaction to wheat gluten. A low- or no-carb diet would fix this, but if your only reason for being on such a restricted diet is for digestive problems, you may be able to add oats, barley, rice, corn, and other non-wheat grains and grain products back into your diet.
personal attacks hurt, especially when deserved
It's amazing how simple it can be.
Walking is key, especially if you can walk with some vigor. Not eating fast food is really important, although "no matter what" is a bit extreme. I indulge sometimes, but its always when its that or not eating at all, usually once per month.
You want to stop eating *when you're not hungry*, not when you're full. Being full is a sign of having eaten too much.
As for who it would and wouldn't work for, I'd imagine it would work for just about everyone. Look at a lot of European countries where walking and non-fast-food diets are the norm -- how many fat people do you see?
Honestly, I don't know many people who follow the food pymriad well. They eat more meat than it recommends, less fruits and grains, and lots of snacks inbetween.
;)
I don't think it is easy to make a blank statement about America that the food pyrmiad has failed. One, as the article hinted at, it costs a lot of money to do studies that look into these things. Despite the food pyrmiad being taught in school, doesn't mean Americans follow it.
I remember snacking soooo much when I was a kid. I also ran around a helluva lot. Tee hee, I wonder how much of a connection was there.
According to the article, it depends on the types of carbs. My diet is high-carb, but the carbs are complex, whole wheats, instead of the simple white breads.
Aw, but it takes longer for cholesterol to pass through our bodies because of our winding intestines. As compared to a cat or a dog, who have a straight pipe right to their poop shoot. Maybe our body has more time to absorb and distribute it around, maybe it doesn't. (There are conflicting reports on that from either camp.)
What I did pick up on from the article is there hasn't been enough research either way. I'm glad the NIH has funded research into the Atkin's diet, I look forward to what their analysis will lead to.
Homer: So one of those Egg Council creeps got to you too, huh?
Lenny: Aw, you've got it all wrong, Homer. It's not like that.
[a man in an egg costume creeps, then runs, away]
Homer: You'd better run, egg!
Homer the Great
Wait a second brother. The form of calcium in milk can be broken down, I think about 30% of it can be successfully converted. Spinach and other green leafy vegetables are also good sources of calcium as well.
I have been reading about the calcium/protein balance in the body. An excess of protein makes the blood more acidic, which the body counters by releasing a base - calcium - into the blood stream. How much is considered an excess is a question?
Watching an infomercial one day on Atkins, it sounded too good to be true, so we bought his book and tried his diet.
First... here are the good things about the diet (then I'll list the bad things):
THE GOOD
1) Yes, you can eat *unlimited* quantities of meats etc... as long as you totally control your carb intake. We would go to Outback or Ruths Chris and I would eat 3 or 4 porkchops... and some brocolli... till I could eat no more.
2) The diet throws you into ketosis - which is a diabetic term for pure fat burning. You can go to the drug store and get ketosis testing strips, little PH papers that you pass your pee stream over. The color the paper turns indicates the amount you are in ketosis. Once in ketosis, you are in pure fat burning mode.
3) Did I lose weight? YOU BET!!! I dropped from 250+ pounds to 190 pounds in about 8 months. The diet is amazing because on a daily basis, you can easily see 1/2 to 2 pounds disappear (make sure you weigh yourself at exactly the same time each day for accurate statistics). My wife also dropped 50 pounds.
THE BAD
Here are some negative things about the diet:
1) You must be sure to drink LOTS of water on this diet... and I mean LOTS. The diet is very hard on the kidneys because they have to work overtime to break down the larger molocules. By drinking lots of water you assist your kidneys and actually drop the weight even faster. If you don't drink water, kidney damage can result.
2) The closer you get to your desired weight (e.g., the longer you are on the diet), the slower you begin to drop weight. At the start of the diet, the pounds were flying off. By the end, we would even out for a few days and then drop a pound or two. The book says this happens - and indeed it does. The main reason for this is that your body has adapted to the new diet - so for us, that was the stopping point.
3) Upfront it is very gratifying to eat unlimited amounts of all those wonderful foods... but in the end we tended to become bored with the diet - which happens in most diets. But don't get me wrong, we were still happy as can be that we dropped 60 pounds in such a short time.
THE UGLY
You stop pooping. Because you are getting little fiber in your diet (and the diet recommends that you keep up on high fiber, but it's hard) - you literally stop pooping. Other problems associated with not pooping can raise their ugly bumps at this point. However, this all goes away once you ease yourself off the diet.
The other negative... you drop weight so fast that your skin ends up loose. This was a shock to my wife and me. We actually had skin that looked to be very loose. It took about 3 months after the diet was over for the skin to tighten up to our new bodies - but tighten it did.
So did I keep the pounds off?
The diet encourages you to reach a point and then back off the diet. The wonderful thing about the diet is that you now understand how to quickly lose weight... so if you indulge in a weekend of excess, all you need to do is go on the diet for 3 days to lose that excess and back down you are.
I've managed to keep the weight off - and right now I'm fluxuating around 200 lbs. I'm about to start again because I want to drop the final 30 lbs.
Another positive point... if you have cronic heart burn - we discovered it was from eating carbs. In fact, a friend of mine who had been told to sleep upright because of his cronic heartburn, had the symptoms totally disappear (as did I) on this diet. Amazing. And since, I've noticed that I only get heart burn if I eat too many carbs in a meal.
The diet is not for everyone... and it helps to have a partner go through it with you (otherwise whoever you eat with won't like the meat-only choices you are forcing). Anyway... it worked for me - and it tought me to not listen to the government bullshit about the food pyrimid or any of their other crap they shovel out about dieting. They don't have a clue.
ALOHA!
Somewhere, a native american is laughing at us.
The primary gist of my earlier statement was not to dis the atkins diet as written, my (shallow) analysis finds it not nearly so extreme, nor so remarkable, as most of the most vociferous partisans (on each side) seem to believe. I'm sorry, I didn't make my point very well.
Here it is: Suppose you need to lose weight. You're eating a balanced diet, but, after counting you calories you disover you're getting 2800 a day, and you want to cut back to 2000 a day (let's suppose you're an active person) so you can drop some weight.
For me, it was much easier simply to stop eating bread, fruit (I took fibre supplements and vitamin supplements), and just eat eggs for breakfast, tuna out of a can (no dressing) for lunch, and a small steak (or fish) for dinner.
It's the same I'd usually eat except: no toast/juice with my eggs, no bread with my lunch, no potatoes or dessert with dinner.
Now, this "diet" is way too high in fat to be balanced, but I got there by *eliminating* foods, and not adding anything different that I wasn's already eating. It would proabably be compliant with "Atkin's" rules, too.
Fat is a great appetite suppressant. If I were to eat a low-fat Muffin for breakfast, I want another one as soon as I was done. If I were to eat 2 eggs (70 calories apiece) and a piece of cheese (lets assume 100 calories), I'd have 240 calories but FOR ME PERSONALLY, I'd feel fuller. I suspect that many other people feel "fuller" after eating fat than the same amount of sugar or carb calories.
Is this diet bad? I haven't started eating anything I wasn't already. I basically just sliced off the bottom of the foot pyramid and left the top. My LDL:HDL ratio is fine, I have a physical every year. -- Robert
I have a great diet idea that has only two ingredients: Rancid Tuna and Raw Pork. Eat these for only 3 days! You will lose 70+ pounds from the diarrhea and food poisoning alone!
Except of course, that NOBODY BURNS CALORIES AT THE SAME RATE. Not even CLOSE. An exercising behemoth may still actually burn only 1/10 the calories that a lazy young arrogant couch-potato linux head might burn after a day of playing quake.
who wants to lose weight when you could be gaining weight for fabulous cash and prizes?
Enjoy
I wonder just what role diet soda has played in this? It seems that every year I see more really obese people drinking ever larger tubs of aspartame-laden drinks? Could it be that diet sodas give people a false sense that they are 'cutting calories' so they can justigy the super size meal? Or is there something more subtle at work?
What is it we are evolved to eat? Remember that our genes have basically not changed in the last 10,000 or even 50,000 years. So what were we eating 100,000 or 1,000,000 years ago?
We weren't farmers.
We're optimized to eat fruit, vegetables, a few nuts, fish and very lean meat. There's just no equivalent to the dense carbs that we mostly eat now. We certainly didn't eat bread, pasta, bran muffins, etc -- just the tiny amount of grain we might gather.
To me, that's compelling. It's not surprising that large amounts of grain-based carbs would be sub-optimal. Exactly how that's suboptimal is a matter of debate and study, but it seems a safe bet that eating the foods we were *designed* to eat is the most healthful.
And note that I did put fruits and vegetables first on the list, and those are carbs. And they're good for you. So it's not so much low carb as low grain, low sugar, etc. Kids aren't getting fat because they've suddenly started eating too many apples.
they taste better and are the same thing, dietetically
Except hershey bars don't have the fiber, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals that fruit has. That's dietetically speaking. Of course, you're right about the sugar and weight-gain part, but the difference is that fruit will fill you up more because of the fiber, so you'd probably eat less of it than hershey bars.
...the only way to lose weight is to eat less calories than you burn. I've read that the ideal way is actually to calculate the average amount of calories you use per day and intake about 50-100 less than this. I never did anything so complicated as counting calories, just ate less, but I lost like 60 pounds and kept them off. What worked for me was none of this carb/protein/fat bullshit, but just eating less (specifically, skipping lunch)... I've found that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, and the less the better... I know this flies in the face of conventional dieting "wisdom", but I've known too many people that use more conventional diets like low-fat or Atkins and they just don't work as well as mine.
-raph
I think you're right. Here's an article from the same edition of the NT Times that adds some worthwhile info.
A publicly traded company exists solely to make profits for shareholders.
The real reason why a lot of poor (by US standards) and recently-but-no-longer poor Americans eat poorly has a lot to do with class mobility. People learn eating habits early, and as part of family cultures. When families are still in "survivor mode," when the experience of scarcity is still persistant in the values of that family, they are taught, first, that food is an intrinsic pleasure and, secondly, that the waste of food is unethical and risky. Add to that factors like a. stress, b. schedules that encourage fewer, bigger meals instead of more, smaller ones, and c. the lack of information about healthier foods (or of a traditional food-culture, like those in Spain, France, and Japan, that has over centuries learned how to make healthier meals) and you have the formula for obesity
You call that an application of Ockham's Razor? If anything, the gradual increase in laziness (the Law of Entropy, no doubt) makes a whole lot more sense -- especially if you're applying Ockham -- than your aforementioned theory.
You can blame McDonalds all you want - the fact is that the majority of the population does not eat there. The studies showed most of peoples calories were coming from carbs, NOT fat - which makes sense, since the food pyramid, which is a sham, has high carb foods as it's base.
So what you're saying is that more people are scrupulous about following the food guide pyramid and getting their 3-5 helpings of veggies, 2-4 servings of fruits, etc. than there are people who pick up their Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese Supersize combo meal at their local McDonald's drive-thru?
Ask most people, and they don't even know what that food pyramid thingy *is*. They just see "low-fat/no-fat" at the store (or on TV...) and think they have to have it. (Mmmm, Snackwells... only one gram of fat! And 150 grams of sugar!)
Radical low-carb diets may work for *some* people under extremely closely supervised conditions, but they're dangerous to do on your own. High fat, high protein diets may make some people drop weight, but they lead to increased chance of kidney and liver failure, and radically increased chances of colon and prostate cancer, not to mention diabetes and hypertension. Diets that focus on "low-fat/no-fat" risk turning people into Coke/No Fat candy bar eaters, causing their sugar intake to spike.
I'm not noticing a whole lot of people here (or the guy who wrote the article) making distinctions between simple and complex carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates (white bread, white rice, sugar) are to be avoided, while complex carbohydrates (vegetables, fruits, brown rice, legumes, whole wheat) are actually good for you. Similarly, saturated fats are generally to be avoided if you have any genetic predisposition to high cholesterol or hypertension (like I do), but monounsaturated fats and omega-3 fats (like what is found in nuts, fish, shellfish, olive oil) will improve your cholesterol levels.
And you've got to drink lots of water and exercise regularly, cardio *and* weight lifting. Cardio won't do a whole lot to burn fat, but it will increase your body's metabolism, and strengthen your heart (it *is* a muscle, after all).
-- "God, Root, what is difference?" - Pitr, "User Friendly"
The first part is true, the second is not. Adipose (fat) tissue requires little or no energy to maintain, and has a very low water content. Muscle requires a lot more maintainence and a lot more water. Fat is stored in large intracellular sacs, with little organization. Muscle is highly organized and avoiding entropy costs energy. The resting rate at which those two people burn calories will be different, with the higher value on the "exercising behemoth" side. BTW, resting heart rate drops, but ejection volume (ammount of blood moved with each beat) increases. The ammount of energy expended in each beat is much higher. This is because of the increased water content results in increased blood voume. Increased blood volume gives more inertia to the circulating blood, making it harder to move and harder to stop.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
The author of this article and some of the "scientific community" were on Diane Rehm today (NPR).
I haven't read the article, but I took away from this discussion that the "scientific community" leaves a lot to be desired.
The author was attacked personally numerous times. He was always calm and collected in his responses. The "scientific community" sounded like a bunch of 2 year olds not getting their way. This debate is very vitriolic and highly personal. I came away (mind you not having read the article) that the author raised some valid questions (that the "scientific community" doesn't seem to want to answer).
I quote "scientific community," because these folks didn't act very scientific. This is as bad as pediatricians not wanting to buck the American Academy of Pediatrics on whether to vaccinate or not vaccinate, when there are valid questions of when it is and is not appropriate.
I'm frankly tired of "scientists" trying to cram their pet pseudoscience down my throat as fact.
I think I addressed the causes earlier when I said the primary problem is lack of willpower and laziness. Sounds like a pretty direct statement of cause to me. The moral language bit, however, is completely offtopic and I'm clueless as to how that post can be construed as such.
The cause and effect issue is fine, but I'd spend considerably less time contemplating it and more time acting. Any significant, valid cause has already been thought of and you aren't going to contribute anything. This isn't the microprocessor industry. Creative thought may yield a few more fad diets, but once again, stick to the old methods of proper diet and exercise. Let's see, eating crappy food and leading a sedentary lifestyle will make you fat. Could it be that laziness is a cause for sitting the couch and watching T.V.? Or maybe lack of willpower is responsible for the purchase of those candy bars? These are not new concepts.
I'm not telling people that I think everybody should be like me. I'm saying there are choices that have to be made, like whether you want to keep a steady supply of Oreos and Breyer's ice cream in the house or put that money away for your child's college education. This is not moral language, it's just basic financial and health sense that many choose not to heed. And for the record, I abhor moral advice coming from anyone other than close family, thus I don't give it. Food and morality? Give me a break. Maybe if you're Jewish or Hindu.
"Software is like sex. It's better when it's free." -Linus Torvalds
In general terms, "have more willpower and be less lazy" is less actionable than "eat this, do that." The former is poor advice, and essentially moral in tone, because it's a critique of character in a way that doesn't provide an effective path. Consider that the evidence is coming out against the effectiveness of traditional low-fat diets, and you are berating people for the design failures of a regimen. Different diets and regimens will have different amounts of pain, exertion, discomfort, and hunger associated with them, and those regimens which are over the threshold that the majority of people can endure are poor ones.
Want to get in shape?
:)
Migrate from UNIX to Windows. You'll get a lot of exercise walking to the server room to reboot crashed systems.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
You rock. Keep it up.
A few notes for those hoping for a miracle:
You're eating less and therefore losing weight, not claiming some thermodynamic miracle from what you do eat.
You're taking fiber and vitamins to replace important bits that are missing from an otherwise incomplete diet.
You're keeping track of your LDL:HDL.
All excellent diet plans, no matter what one were to choose as a diet base. I'm repeating your points to amplify them because I think if anyone else bothers to read this far, and should they be looking for a good example of the right way to experiment with a reduced carbohydrate diet plan that might work for them, you've got it.
My problem is with the more extreme proponents of the high fat diets - such as the original times piece which is bizarrely partisan and biased - that suggest (as the text and particularly the accompanying photograph did) that butter on pork is the foundation of a good weight loss program and a healthy, heart smart diet somehow in synchrony with our cattle-ranching, vegitable-eschewing, pre-agrarian proto-humans.
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The key is to change your eating habits permanently. More fresh fruit and vegatables. Less carbs and fat, and stay away from the junk food. Exercise regularly, cardio and weight training. Pick a regime you can realisticly stick to for the rest of your life.
The best place to exercise your will power is when you are grocery shopping. If you don't have piles of junk food at home, you'll eat less of it. Always use a list to grocery shop. Stick to the list. Allow yourself some treats.
You should do at least 30 minutes of cardio daily. A brisk walk is enough to improve your health, but the more active the better. Weight training once or twice a week for an hour helps keep your muscles and bones strong. You are not trying to be a 'body builder', just keep in shape. Do two sets of ten reps for each main body part. You will get stronger and be able to increase the weights you are lifting for the first few months, but most people 'plateau' within a year (unless you really dedicate yourself to weight training which is not required for good health) and stop adding more weight to what they lift.
Eat less, but don't starve yourself. Exercise regularly. Eat more healthy food. Avoid saturated fats as much as possible. Moderation is the key to a lefstyle you can live with for life.
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Lemmy Caution, you presented the facts in wonderful fashion. I totally agree with your statements. I am obese, and no I don't have thyroid problems or some physical problems. My problems arise from: 1. Computers (My job, Hobby, and Executioner more then likely), 2. TV(Dvds, movies, etc), 3. Snack foods/Junk Food (The curse of a computer junkie), and 4. Lack of ambition (Why hit the gym for an hour when I can be online for that hour and not get exhausted). Yes, the better part of my immediate family is obese but I am not even going to try and pin my obesity on genetics. I was raised (and until the age of about 15) on a fairly healthy diet and I was very slim. We were, for all intentional purposes, poor and couldn't afford the fast food or "snack" food that is so widespread in the US today. At the age of 15 I got my first job at a fast food place (Note to those who are inclined to being heavy: If you are, don't get a job in the food industry!) The weight problem started going on around 16 and right around the same time computers were becoming popular. I was hooked. I attended college for a degree in computers and my lack of physical activity spun off from there. I would say people in the U.S. especially are finding fewer reasons to do physical activity because it's so much easier not to. Men especially have less ambition to work out or keep fit because they have fewer issues with their physical image. Computers, Technology, Tvs, DVDs, and home entertainment have pushed many Americans to obesity. I for one am finally coming out of my computer daze and am realizing that something needs to be done about my own personal problem. The hardest thing for an obese computer geek is hitting the gym daily (do I hear an AMEN?). I'm sure there are people out there who can relate(There's proof. Just check computer dating sites.) Cheerio!
More than anything else, Atkins (and low carb diets in general) do make a distinction between refined sugars and fiber in carbohydrates. In practice, we generally subtract fiber from the total carbohydrate count - we don't count *that* kind of carbohydrate against our daily maximums.
I think low-carb is really misunderstood in this respect, people simplify it to be high-fat versus low-fat. There is even, usually, a clear distinction made between good and bad fats. This is a key factor, because the "good" fats can actually help metabolize stored fat - and increase HDL.
The end result, contrary to what you wrote, is that most people, giving the diet at least a two month chance, see lower blood pressure, higher HDL, lower triglycerides, and much better control over blood sugar levels and therefore insulin levels. I know people who were type 2 diabetic that NO LONGER REQUIRED THEIR MEDICATION because low-carb was doing such a good job controlling insulin levels.
ALL the low-carb diets also require a high intake of water. And there is no proof of anyone DEVELOPING liver or kidney problems following this diet. There is some concern about elevated protien, but so far there is not a single case of problems that can be tied back to the low-carb diets.
Also, Atkins does NOT say you can't eat vegatables or fruits - the beginning steps require this, but not for very long (a couple of weeks maybe). I think the low-carb diets are very misunderstood. I advocate that healthy people eat a balanced diet and get regular exersize, but the reality is that so many people are already overweight and simply don't have the time for exersize - control over your diet is crucial. I am talking about me, and no, I don't sit on my ass watching TV - I usually only see television during the rare times I do get to exersize.
And one final point - I see a lot of people stating the brain can't operate without carbs. From the article: There are plenty of generations of humans that lived on low-carb diets. Essentially, we probably agree, for the most part, what has really been detrimental to us is the past 100 years or so, using refined sugars and flour as staples in our diets. As I've said, I really think the low-carb diets are really misunderstood.
To conclude - a person my size may maintain on as many as 100 grams of carbohydrates a day. After losing the weight by restricting this to 30 or so, I find it hard to believe government recommendations of 300 day!!!!!
Stupid sexy Flanders.
How must it look in the world, that people grown fat in countries consuming several times the global norm of resources say they should solve their symptoms of overindulgence by consuming significantly *more* resources (all animal products)? Maybe, properly applied for brief periods, people can shed large amounts of fat and get back into balance with protein diets, and the impact isn't so great. But what is the reality ecologically? Getting vast numbers of people to consume more animal products for years and years with ambivalent results? Do the originators of these diets really have the right to extend them out of special case patients and burden the planet with yet more large scale unnecessary consumption?
Fear not, my friend! Our fearless selected, not elected, leader: George W Bush, is planning on having a veritable SWAT team to deal with these rich moneybags. Of course, the shenanigans he pulled at Harken Energy Corp. were "legitimate disagreements over accounting practices." The disagreement, apparently, was that some people thought that you should be held responsible for doing illegal acts, while others felt that rich shits like the Bushes don't need to be held to the same standard as a black guy stealing $23.50 from a vending machine (10 years jail).
Oh really? How much fiber is in a hershey bar? Fruits vary a bit in fiber content, but most of them have at least some.
Beautifully put.
Why in the world do you consider this factoid important or relevant?
Did you even read the fucking article, moron?
No joke: I lost 35lbs in 4 months and the worst side effect was the one morning I awoke from a dream of Heather Lockleer feeding me pieces of garlic bread and beer...
:)...
In January 2000 I went on a "hard-core" Atkins plan. I READ THE BOOK, I got my Vitamins, and then I cleared the house of carbohydrates. Then I got serious:
I went on the induction plan and kept my carbohydrates under 20g per day. And as much as it pained me I had NO booze for the first two weeks. I got back into, and STAYED on, my exercise plan of two miles 3x per week on my Nordic Track.
I only eat breakfast on weekends but breakfast was eggs and sausage or a cheese omelette; plus an occasional dose of Atkins pancakes.
Lunch at work was a salad of Romain lettuce, cheese, hard boiled eggs, black olives, and chicken breast.
Dinner was meat {easy for me as I am a big carnivore and not much of a pasta fan} - Lobster tails, crab, steak, rack of lamb, swordfish, salmon, garlic roasted chicken, Atkins meatloaf, or Atkins fried chicken. On the side a dark green veggie - usually asparagus smothered in Hollondaise sauce.
Snacks were almonds, beef jerky, cheese, sausage, pork rinds, or Atkins bars.
I kept this up until a vacation in mid April and I was never hungry. And from January to mid April I shed 35 lbs. After the two week induction period I allowed myself as many Vodka & Diet Tonics as I wanted; Atkins doesn't forbid alcohol after the two week induction period. I'm definitely in the low carb camp
--Richard
P.S. I kept the weight off until earlier this year. As of today I've krept up 10lbs {due to 1) I stopped exercising when I got the flu a few months back, and 2) I've been drinking beer with coworkers after work}. Next week I'm going to go back on Atkins for a month or so and get back into my exercise routine, mmmmm lobster in butter... I'll keep the weight off because I have the power!
You do understand that 'a majority' implies more than 50%, and that 25% is less than 50%, don't you?
Idiot. There are more possibilities than these two positions. Most people probably fall somewhere in the middle.
While most people may not know of the food pyramid, most of them are pretty familiar with the basic idea that grains/breads/fruits/vegetables are healthy, and meat, etc. are unhealthy.
95% of all martial arts places in the US are tae kwon do.
I don't care for it. I'm studying Taijutsu, which is a bit of a mix of several japanese arts . Its elegant to watch because looks so simple. Its spooky how such a simple-looking art can be so complicated.
But I'm doing it more for flexibility and agility more than fighting. Lets see if I'm motivated to get close to a black belt.
Attention Fat geeks:
Here's how I dropped from 280 to 260 in three months:
Stop drinking Coke.
Yeah, heresy, right? The *only* thing I did was switch from regular Dr Pepper to Diet Dr Pepper and water (mainly water). I was drinking about 10 DrPs a day. At ~200 calories a pop. That extra 2000 calories a day really adds up.
It's amazing that everybody on slashdot has the answer the the worlds dieting problems! It's a good thing this story about the lack of proper research got run. *cough*
i'm not gonna repeat what anyone has said about eating because its all been said. i'm in decent shape and i try to eat in moderation, though i do tend to eat alot more carbs than most as i run, alot. but thats besides the point. dieting alone will not make you lose weight. you need to exercise. it doesn't matter what. anything that makes you tired. i run and lift and do other things as i feel like it, but whatever you do make sure you like it, and even more importantly, find someone to do it with. that way you don't put it off till tomorrow or do it half assed. get some good old competition in there and work out. try to find someone at about your same ability level too, that helps a lot. soon you'll get addicted to exercising and feel like crap if you dont. if i go without running for a week i feel like i'm ready to kill someone, i swear its addictive like crack. its good for you so go do it.
Um....I think that's unbelievably obvious so I'll just ignore it.
Dear AC Stalker,
I apologize if I've upset the shaky foundations of your magic elixir. If I have then I profoundly hope that you can maintain a firm grasp on your self-delusions. Please feel free to stalk me around, replying to all of my posts with such witty insults as "moron" (I like the "assron" and "morhole" too : Very grade 2): If that's what makes you tick then go nuts. Personally I enjoy it and look forward to more.
For the rest of us we have a rational, reasoned approach that takes any single source with a huge grain of salt : This article is one article in a SEA of tens of thousands of nutritional articles. Again, I will repeat that most nutritionists call it a sham to single out carbohydrates as the new evil (especially given that many meat and dairy fats are increasingly being show to be heart killers. Don't ask Mr. Atkins : I believe he's still recovering from his heart attack). Note that ANY nutritionists recommends that you lay off simple carbohydrates simply because it's low hanging fruit and is an easy way to reduce caloric intake (by cutting back on things like Coke). It's also a sham to lay on the couch and think that you'll become healthy merely by changing what you stuff your face with. Again, if this upsets your fantasy reality, then I apologize.
in french resurants. the protions are much smaller (pretty much the size they should be) and expensive enough for you not to order more than one. :-)
I'd wager to guess that these diets haven't been around long enough to offer proof that problems are caused be Atkins type diets. These things take time and proof in the scientific community is established very slowly, usually taking more than ten well designed studies to get most experts to say there is proof. It probably happens, but it will not be proven for years.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
However, it depends on you mood and "type" of hunger: my sister for instance knows that when shes craving for something and she cant quite pin it down, its normally lentils that she needs. I normally prefer anything salty to sweet foods.
As stated above by another poster, its a matter of uprising...
Enoc
No, it isn't.
Yes, fat contains more calories per gram than protein or carbohydrate. But it also contributes more, gram-for-gram, to the pleasurable properties of food, and to satiety. A small meal with a moderate amount of fat will keep you feeling satisfied far longer than a large low-fat meal.
As I'm sure you know, Dr Atkin's heart atack was caused by a bacterial infection, not artery blockage. Quite rare, but not unknown.
The basic principal behind the Atkins diet - namely that humans have only been eating bulk carbohydrate as a major part of the diet for 5000 years max, and refined sugar for 100 years max (as opposed to other types of food, which go back several million years to forever), and are therefore ill-suited to them, is sounder than any other diet that I've seen.
Here's a challenge: Find a study which shows that a diet that is high in dairy and animal fats, but low in sugar and refined carbohydrate, increases heart disease.
Coke apparently began switching to high fructose corn syrup in 1980, and completed the switch by six months prior to the intro of New Coke. However, the New Coke debacle did spawn the urban legend to which you refer, described on this urban legends page:
About those cultures: There are also Eskimos, who eat very large amounts of animal fats, and they never got heart disease until they started getting refined sugar.
This is always the problem - in western countries especially, high-animal fat and sugar consumption are often highly correlated, which leads to much of the argument.
The irony, of course, is that my "you are in charge of your own destiny" attitude is far LESS common nowadays (coincidentally coupled with a ballooning Western public with obeisity rates bordering on an epidemic). Instead we live in a "oh, it's not your fault!" society that gives everyone an out. Actually, I think what people miss on this is the idea that, while it may not actually be our fault, it is still our responsibility. Fault, and blame, don't really matter half so much as taking actual responsibility for what's going on. In the end, I'm the only one responsible for my life. So, if I don't do anything to "fix" whatever might be wrong, I shouldn't expect anyone else to fix it for me. Just a little food for thought for the many, many people who will disagree with your point of view. Thanks, Jim
Oh, the trials and tribulations of a network geek! Read about them at: http://www.ryumaou.com/hoffman/netgeek/
What a load of crap, do people still believe the Earth is flat?
Reducing diets never work..what happens when you stop if your eating habits were bad to begin with?
I don't need to read study after study to know why...it's common sense everybody knows the answer: If you eat 3000 kilocalories a day and use up 2500 kilocalories with activity you'll store that 500 "calories" of unused energy as fat. Do that enough and you will store a lot of fat.
It's no wonder people in the Western world are fat it's because we all eat too much and exercise very little. In Third World countries (Ethiopia in the 80's especially) where food is scarce and a lot of work is required to even get that food you won't see obese or even overweight people, or at least it's very rare.
Everything in moderation!
A lot of people don't know this:
"...a calorie is the amount of energy, or heat, it takes to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).
It turns out that the calories on a food package are actually kilocalories (1,000 calories = 1 kilocalorie). The word is sometimes capitalized to show the difference, but usually not..."
Howstuffworks.com
How Calories Work
Calories, Fat and Exercise
I don't disagree, but low-carb has been around since long before Atkins, and there's still not a single case of anyone or any doctor saying "there's a case of Kidney problems due to the high protien diet!"
And Atkins published his first book about 30 years ago...
I'm not saying there's proof of anything, I'm saying I hear more cases of people on low-fat diets having rising blood pressure and elevated cholesterol and I hear nothing about any cases of kidney problems while on low-carb (high protien) diets.
It's something that's often parroted and never substantiated...that's my problem with it. People phrase it in such a way as to imply it's a fact, when in reality it seems only as if there's concern by some doctors that some people might have problems... and there hasn't been one yet (that's come forward, anyway).
Stupid sexy Flanders.
What works for me is running after my 1.5 years old daughter. It's both fun and exercise.
I know it's not the geek diet, but having a spouse to emotionally support you and keep each other in check as well as high-energy kids, really helps one live a healthy(ier).
It just much easier to make yourself cook something healthy if your kids and wife are going to eat it. Making a meal for myself was always a huge motivational problem.
Eat a Bacon Egg and Cheese Biscuit w/o the biscuit? I can't drink OJ or cranberry juice anymore? No more sandwiches? No more pumpernickel bread w/ dill dip? No more potato or french fries w/ dinner?
This diet doesn't sound like fun at all. Big hunking chunks of fat aren't the only thing I'm interested in eating.
I just had to chime in and add this... I've recently been consulting a nutritionalist and a dietician to lose weight before some surgery i'll be having later this year. Out of the three or four actual specialists in the field I have spoken to, not a single one has advocated the Atkins diet after i've mentioned it. In fact, here in Australia it is treated with the scepticism it (and other "fad" diets) deserve by the medical community. It just scares me that people will try it, simply because it doesn't seem too much a change from their already unhealthy diet, or deviation from their tastes and eating habits. Unfortunately, all the health professionals i've dealt with say it is too good to be true. As one of my doctors said, "you would also lose weight eating a strict diet of chocolate, but it doesn't mean it is a safe and effective way of shedding the kilos". Personally, I feel the safety and health risks of the Atkins diet outweigh any potential gains. (colon cancer, anyone?)
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
There is already a term for this condition.
Ignoranus: A person who is ignorant and also an asshole.
This presumes that eating is done when one is "hungry", yet most psychologists agree that eating becomes a bad habit that is psychologically driven, and has absolutely nothing to do with biological hunger. You go to the movies and you eat a big bag of popcorn. You watch TV and eat a bag of chips. I've found myself countless times grabbing for something and then realizing that there is absolutely no reason why I am, except for old habits and a desire to do something distracting.
So what? Eating doesn't become a bad habit for everyone, and when it does, it's something that should probably be dealt with regardless of whether the individual is eating low fat or low carb or neither. Snacking isn't an unavoidable behavior, and there are plenty of people like myself who barely snack at all.
The number one key I've found to avoiding snacking is simply not keeping 'snackable' foods around. Most of them work on a sort of addiction /withdrawal basis: Eating one M&M tastes good, but when the initial rush of sweetness wears off, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that I want to remedy with another M&M. Same thing, to a lesser degree with most chips.
And I only find this addiction/withdrawal pattern with snacks that are high in simple carbs: Candy and chips and such. If I instead snack on a couple of ounces of thinly-sliced proscuitto, I'm satisfied and don't crave more. Snacking on fibrous vegetables is frequently difficult, since they usually need some cooking to be really palatable.
Eating one M&M tastes good, but when the initial rush of sweetness wears off, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that I want to remedy with another M&M. Same thing, to a lesser degree with most chips.
Definitely depends on the person. Not to get too graphic about my chip lovin', but if I have bbq chips, I eat chip by chip and lick the flavour off it (which means that I get sick of it very quickly), yet I watch others literally ram a handful in their mouth at once. A lot of things like that definitely seem to be habit driven (I would wager that children who grew up with siblings in a competitive atmosphere get that "eat it before it's gone" attitude).
If I instead snack on a couple of ounces of thinly-sliced proscuitto, I'm satisfied and don't crave more.
Personally I find an apple or banana does the trick, regardless of whether it's carbs or not, because all it's really satiating is the psychological urge to perform the act of eating versus any real hunger. I would say that most North Americans literally don't even know what hunger feels like (I can't remember the last time I truly felt a serious angst for food).
Surely there must be a few people who have tried the diet and not found it effective? I have yet to see a post on it strangely enough. Maybe the diet is really as effective as it says.
If you've tried the Atkins diet and had it fail for you please post your experiences!
Typical republican logic.
Some plants are poisonous.
All plants are natural.
No pesticides are natural.
Therefore no pesticides are poisonous.
War is necrophilia.
I realize I'm jumping into this discussion way late, but you really need to read the article...
I realize this is slashdot, but would it kill you to read the article? Most of the points you mentioned are discussed and then you could add something to the discussion.
scientific community, most of which largely calls it a sham
READ THE ARTICLE!!
grossly unbalanced moderation at play
Maybe because they have read the article?
Seriously, I would respond to some of your points, but they have already been covered IN THE ARTICLE!
One important thing that you need to keep in mind when reading articles like this is that, regardless of whether it might be the first and only article on nutrition you've ever seen and it seems like a real revolution because it was submitted to Slashdot, it is one article in a sea of tens, or rather hundreds, of thousands of nutritional articles. I read the article and most of it comes across as so ridiculous (such as claims that North American obesity is on the rise because we're all trying to go low-fat...that almost made me choke up my double Big Mac I was slurping down), and so presumptive, that contrasted with the hundreds of other articles I've read on the subject (it most certainly isn't my profession, but health and well being does interest me so I keep up on it) it holds very little weight, pardon the pun. Saying "read the article!" is like some wanker yapping about how someone shouldn't see a doctor, they should just search Google : Just because someone `printed' something doesn't mean much.
The reason I said 'read the article' is because every point you made was address in the article. If you had read it before posting you could have been discussing the topic at hand instead of just repeating what everyone has been saying for the last 30 years.
Now here's the simple bit: energy in = energy out + energy retained.
Note that I spoke of energy, not mass. The mass equation is, indeed, more complex: though energy is neither created nor destroyed.
Fact the bio-available energy in fat is about 93%, proteins yield about 70%, complex carbohydrates yield about 85% as about 15% cannot be digested before reaching the small intestine (anal exit mode); unless you eat too much carbohydrate for your liver to store as glucose, in which case approximately 23% of the energy available is consumed (thermogenesis) and the rest is stored as fat. (W.P.T. James, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1987)
Now a bit more protein is probably wont hurt (though it can be hard on your liver, but that takes decades and you can always get a new one), and less refined sugar is definitely a good thing (preserve that pancreas). But substituting complex carbohydrates such as grains for fats is a quick prescription for heart disease.
Please site the reference which quantifies satiety...
Both complex carbohydrates and fats are considered "high satiety" foods. Simple sugars aren't. I doubt you'll find any diet promoting simple sugars as the foundation of a good diet.
The "gram for gram" statement is poorly constructed as you attempt to conflate an accurately quantifiable and objective measure (grams) with a subjective, non-quantifiable measure (satiety).
"Lots and lots of vegetables"
"as much of the cuisine as vegetables and rice"
"vegetables and fruit dishes"
That's exactly the point. Umm, that big marbled slab of beef on the plate.... I think you're missing the point. The high fat diets are typified by the cover of the NYT article - butter on a pork chop.
If you're a cook, you should become familiar with the nutritional information for common foods; this might help:
Rice (white 1/2 cup): 2g protein, 20g carbohydrate, 0 fat
Pepper (green or red 1/2 cup): 0.4g protein, 3.2g carbohydrate, 0.1g fat
Green Beans (1/2 cup): 1.2g protein, 4.9g carbohydrate, 0.2g fat
Peas (1/2 cup): 4.3g protein, 12.5g carbohydrate, 0.2g fat
Green Beans (1/2 cup): 1.2g protein, 4.9g carbohydrate, 0.2g fat
Broccoli (1/2 cup, fresh, raw): 1.3g protein, 2.3g carbohydrate, 0.2g fat
Asparagus (4 spears, fresh, raw): 1.8g protein, 2.1g carbohydrate, 0.1g fat
Banana: 1.2g protein, 26.7g carbohydrate, 0.6g fat
Apple: 0.3g protein, 21.1g carbohydrate, 0.5g fat
vs.
Butter (1 Tablespoon): 0.1g protein, 0 carbohydrate, 11.4g fat
Pork (4 oz.): 31.1g protein, 0 carbohydrate, 25.1g fat
Butter and pork = high fat, high protein.
Rice and vegetables = high carbohydrate, low fat, moderate protein.
Carbohydrate = 4.1 C/gm, Proteins = 5.7 C/gm, Fat = 9.3 C/gm.
Your expert evaluation of the ingredients proves the point, thank you.
I think you're replying to my post, in which case the answer is "I did," of course. I have also read a good chunk of Barry Sears book, an excellent text book on sports nutrition (Sports Nutrition), a well written popular book on sports nutrition (Optimal Sports Nutrition - gotta love creative titles), and I've been a competitive athlete, run 3 marathons (3:18 in the Boston Marathon, though that was years ago), was a nationals level wrestler (PAPSWIT) in high school, competed in the (div 3) nationals in gymnastics in college, etc...
And I eat about 50-75 grams of protein/day when I'm exercising, as little LDL heavy fat as possible, a good dose of HDL heavy fat (vegetable sources such as rape seed oil), fish when I can, occasionally red meat, and LOTS of carbohydrate.
Yeah - it's slashdot and when I answer people I carefully research my answers - usually on the web (though I use my texts when they're at hand). I'm careful to get data from what appear to be reasonable, responsible sources. Now in this case the proponents have no meaningful studies to back up their claims so it's hard to refute, but Sears in particular argues that the nutrition world has been bought by the Vegetable Cartel! so of course all those heart/weight/diet studies have been bought... can't argue with that.
Michael Pollan wrote an editorial in the 7/19/02 NYT (reg req blah) that supports just the points I made above.
Michael Pollan is the brilliant botanist who's fresh air interview made a hero out of marajuana.
Both Low Carb Dieters and Healthy Eaters will probably find support for their beliefs in the article, but I would posit that the gist of the article supports my contention that refined sugar, vilified by both Atkins and The Health Establishment, is Bad rather than the Atkins/Seal claim that a "Healthy" diet high in complex carbohydrates is to blame for obesity and the cure is eschew that false saint and pray instead to the great god of well-marbled beef, deep fried and basted in butter.
To clarify, I don't object to the concept that reducing sugared foods will help people cut weight - that seems tautological - but I do object to the contention that fat doesn't cause weight gain and the villain is the vegetable. That just violates thermodynamics and all available data.
But simple physics also dictates that if someone finds that they, personally, are more satisfied with fewer calories of fat rather than more calories worth complex carbohydrates (times the 97% bioavailiblity of fat calories vs. the 85% bioavailibility of complex carbohydrate calories), then the fat will result in less net weight gain. Note that there is no long term study to suggest that it is safe to do so, and the suggestion that it is contradicts all studies so far done. But what the hell, if you look good who cares?
Anyway, to dump another steaming load of reason into the middle of the debate, one which fits the established view of diet, Pollan points out:
The problem in corn's case is that we're sacrificing the health of both our bodies and the environment by growing and eating so much of it. Though we're only beginning to understand what our cornified food system is doing to our health, there's cause for concern. It's probably no coincidence that the wholesale switch to corn sweeteners in the 1980's marks the beginning of the epidemic of obesity and Type 2 diabetes in this country. Sweetness became so cheap that soft drink makers, rather than lower their prices, super-sized their serving portions and marketing budgets. Thousands of new sweetened snack foods hit the market, and the amount of fructose in our diets soared.
This would be bad enough for the American waistline, but there's also preliminary research suggesting that high-fructose corn syrup is metabolized differently than other sugars, making it potentially more harmful. A recent study at the University of Minnesota found that a diet high in fructose (as compared to glucose) elevates triglyceride levels in men shortly after eating, a phenomenon that has been linked to an increased risk of obesity and heart disease. Little is known about the health effects of eating animals that have themselves eaten so much corn, but in the case of cattle, researchers have found that corn-fed beef is higher in saturated fats than grass-fed beef.
It's the damn corn syrup kids - no matter what diet religion you pledge fealty to, it's the source of your Satan: fructose and saturated fat.
Assuming you mean 20 grams of carbs per day, that's like half a piece of bread.
Actually, most bread is 10-15 carbs per slice. There's even bread out there that's only 8 carbs per slice.
One french frie puts you over the limit.
French fries are made out of potatoes, which I believe have slightly less carbos than grains. Still, I'd say that 'one french fry' would probably be 1-2 carbos. Hardly anything that would put you over the limit, but would it really be all that satisfying to eat just one?
Which brings up another point:
When you're on the Atkin's diet, you choose your carbos carefully. Would you rather have a jelly-filled donut, or a medium bowl of pasta? Both have about the same carbos (about 25-35), but I'd take the pasta any day.
Another interesting fact: Most non-diet soft drinks have anywhere from 30-60 carbos worth of sugar per can. And even the 30 is a rather low estimate. Now, brownies are about 15-25 carbs per brownie. Which would you rather have, 2-3 brownies, or a can of soda?