Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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.
In general, these "scientific battleground" stories are more hype than reality.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
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.
Right now I'm loosing 1-2lbs per week on a traditional low fat moderate exersize diet. Nothing special, just eating healther and in moderation. I've been doing this for six months now without problem.
I think the truth is that there are different diets that work for different people. A one size fits all approach probably won't be the answer here. until we do more good science on the subject, I'm skeptical of anyone who says there is one true way.
What do you know I wrote a novel
Yah, I never found it all that hard. Eat healthy food. Healthy not being in a box in a grocery store that says "99% fat free". Healthy food being everything in that colorful corner of the grocery store. Fruits, vegetables, and if you eat meat, eat it. I recommend fish, salmon, etc. if you're going to eat meat, but some people love their beef, so I guess eat it.
"Diets" don't work. By definition they are temporary and restrictive. Instead, just eat GOOD food. It's pretty simple what's GOOD food. That extra large pizza with extra cheese? Not good. That orange and apple over there? Good. Those vegetables? Good.
Don't eat too many potatoes or excessively high carb foods, but don't eat nothing but steak either. Thus, eat everything in moderation, mostly good food, but don't deny yourself bad food either. Besides, most 'healthy' food that isn't processed and stamped with the 99% fat free label, is pretty good tasting. You don't hear many people saying "Boy, that orange sure was disgusting," unless it was a rotten one.
And exercise too, but do something fun. I don't know how people can ride stationary bikes or run on treadmills for an hour every day. The boredom kills me. I play racquetball and other active sports.
In summary, it's pretty much the same stuff you've been hearing all along: eat good food, and exercise. What qualifies as 'good food' is pretty easy to figure out.
What?
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.
(* 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. *)
It is not that simple. For one, matabilism will often slow down if you reduce your caloric intake. Billions of years of evolution has tought the body to efficiently hord food, but this is not what modern people need.
(begin flamebait)
My big fat ugly belly is proof of evolution, you Bible-thumpin' zealots!
(end flaimbait)
Further, if you reduce your amount below what the body wants, it cranks up the craving harmones, and it is harder and harder to resist.
Table-ized A.I.
It's a common misconception that if you don't eat fatty food you won't gain weight. When they show you how many grams of fat are in a food it's listing the 'fat present at the time' Your body can convert many things to fat to be stored. Eat 10 lbs of fat free food a day and try to guess what happens, that is why many people are fat. They over consume and under exercise.
There is evidence to prove both Democrats and Republicans are lying cocksuckers. Vote independently.
I never understood why people were so obsessed with 'losing weight'. For all you know the weight you are losing is just higher density muscle tissue. Wouldn't that suck? Overall health is more important than weight. Some people that are 'skinny' aren't very healthy at all. They're malnourished or lacking vitamins they need. Anyway, same thing like you said "one size fits all" isn't the way to go. Some people have perfectly healthy hearts, bodies, and minds, and are what many of us would consider to be 'chubby' or 'fat'. We don't all have to be fit and trim muscle men/women to be healthy.
What?
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.
Yes, and this injection results in people changing what they eat and their exercise pattern how?
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?
Right now I'm loosing 1-2lbs per week on a traditional low fat moderate exersize diet. Nothing special, just eating healther and in moderation. I've been doing this for six months now without problem.
/KNOW/ I can keep this one up for ages (err, eat whatever the fuck I want to and save assloads of gas money by biking to campus/work. w00t).
:^)
I am losing 1-2lbs a year on a high fat moderate exercice diet.
I
You gotta choose your fights man, shoot, can you really keep that up forever?
My legs keep on going from flabby to non-flabby to flabby to non-flabby, hehe. Oscillators!
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
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?
Never mind, neither did I. But the point is that in the last few decades there has been a great increase in "low fat" food being offered in the USA. At the same time, the country is going into a huge obesity epidemy.
OK, let's do a totally unscientific and empirical study. Can you eat just a few "low fat" potato chips? Can you eat two club crackers and put the package away? That's the problem with "low fat" food: you never get enough of it.
With fatty food, you just don't want to eat more after a normal serving. Try to eat a juicy steak, and a serving of potato chips afterwards. You will find that about 150 grams of fatty meat are enough to satisfy a "normal human being", if such thing exists, but you cannot ever get enough "low fat" potato chips. Food manufacturers count on this simple fact.
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
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.
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?
You gotta choose your fights man, shoot, can you really keep that up forever? :^)
Yes. Yes I do. When I say without problem, I mean that the weight loss has been consistant, not that there is any hardship in maintaining the diet. I am not dieting, I'm eating a healthier diet.
I feel good and my pants fit better, and in the end that is the criteria I use.
What do you know I wrote a novel
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.
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
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.
Shaddup, fat-ass! [/stan_voice]
"Derp de derp."
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.
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...
"Hey!! I'm not fat! I'm big boned!!"
Then you got big bones in your ass and stomach!
Heh.
"Derp de derp."
"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
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.
Your sample size: 1
Have you looked around you when you were there? Did you see many fat people? Do you know how much bread the average french person eats a day? Seriously! Your comment is really weird.
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.
<AOL>Me too.</AOL>
To the guy talking about losing 20 pounds in a week on Atkins - dude, you went into ketosis and dehydrated yourself. Nothing to do with the diet. Good think you knew to drink plenty of water, though.
To the guy who started this thread, talking about losing a pound a week on Atkins - dude, you can do that on any calorie-restricted diet!
A pound of fat is about 3500 calories. Losing a pound a week means a calorie deficit of 500 calories a day.
Suggested reading #1: The Hacker's Diet (Former CEO of Autodesk describes an approach to dieting in language that will appeal to engineers. He starts with the "3500 calories in a pound of fat", applies the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and derives the rest from there.)
If you normally burn 2000 calories per day to keep yourself alive (i.e. to maintain a body temperature of 98.6F in ambient air of 70F, and to sit erect at a computer terminal), and you want to lose a pound a week, you need to cut 500 calories a day. A moderate-to-heavy soda drinker (say, 4 cans a day) can accomplish this simply by switching from regular (at ~130 cal per can) to diet (zero).
The exercise suggestion part of Atkins is good (but it's a good idea with or without diet), but IMNSHO, the nutritional advice is questionable at best - and dangerous quackery at worst.
Suggested Reading #2: As Quackwatch appears to be down at the moment, I recommend anyone considering a low-carb diet read Google's cached copy of Stephen Barrett's analysis of Atkins and the other low-carb approaches.
I agree with Barrett's conclusion - that most of the "success stories" of Atkins dieters are merely the logical end result result of caloric restriction, and not anything "magical" about the approach -- other than that it's a lot easier and more pleasant to eat 1500 calories of "what you want" (guzzle coffee, water, and diet sodas all day long at the office and finish off - at 400 calories per 4-oz serving - with a juicy well-marbled 16-oz New York Strip for dinner! Every night!) than to live on 1500 calories a day of tofu.
Almost two years ago I went in for a physical and to talk to my doctor about losing weight. I was almost 400 lbs. At that weight, you can't exercise because you'll destroy your joints before you lose any weight (and on an bicycle you fsck over your lower back). Trust me, I've done it. My doc spent several hours doing a physical and taking blood tests, did and EKG, etc...
After looking at the results he recommended that I get on the Atkins diet. He did recommend getting some exercise after losing some of the weight, but I had to get the weight off first. He also had me stop weight lifting because I was actually developing an un-healthy level of muscle mass. Trying to supply too much muscle with blood is actually hard on your heart. Also I found that when you have too much muscle in your upper body you can develop breathing problems in your sleep becuase your torso is too massive. These are some of the probs that body builders put up with. Also my cholesterol was in the 280's and the ratio was "way off" but I don't remember the numbers.
Well, I was on the diet for almost a year and dropped over 100 lbs. At first I was really skeptical, but after being on it for a couple of weeks, I couldn't believe how much energy I had. I was actually hyper. When I dropped about 50 lbs I started riding a bike and then running when I dropped more weight. Now I am 2 belt levels away from getting my black belt in tae kwon do, a lifetime dream of mine but I have alwasy been too heavy to do.
My cholesterol is in the 130's and the ratio has flipped the other way now. I have been off the Atkins diet for almost 9 mos now and have maintained my weight. I can't say that I am totally off the diet, obviously I had to change my way of eating because that's what got me where I was in the first place. I try to eat a low carb breakfast (bacon and eggs or a flax cereal). And a "lower" carb lunch - chicken salad or left over stir fry, maybe soup. Dinner is usually whatever though, spaghetti, pizza, etc...
The problem with the Atkins diet is that it is INCREDIBBLY BORING. I am so freaking sick of meat and cheese. I really should get back on it and drop another 20 - 30 lbs but haven't come up with the motivation to put myself on it full time again. I probably will this fall but I need a break.
The diet isn't for everyone. If people would shut their yap long enough to research it, the diet is actually for a specific type of metabolism. The metabolic condition is really brought on by a diet that has been extremely high in simple carbohydrates complicated by a genetic predisposition to diabetes (which is rampant in my family). You develop an insensativtiy to insulin and need more and more of it to metabolize glucose. The prob is, with that much insulin you body readily stores glucose as fat rather than metabolizes it - it becomes a viscious circle.
Through testing my doc found this condition in my body and recommended the diet which worked. There are several people I work with that thought they would try it without checking with their doc (which Atkins warns against in his book) after seeing my success that got sick on the diet. It isn't for everyone.
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.
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."
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
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.
- 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.
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).
And forget double cheesburgers. Trying to eat the meat without the bread is a messy proposition,
Just use the bun to hold the meat but don't eat it -- just another part of the wrapper.
Yes, the induction phase of the diet gets boring quickly, but you get to add stuff later. Meanwhile, with a bit of effort there are lots of variations and alternatives. Umpteen cuts of beef, pork, chicken, fish, etc. Different kinds of cheese (imagine the Monty Python "Cheese Shop" sketch here), sugar-free jello, sugar-free jello whipped together with cream, etc.
The really hard part is cutting out caffeine (apparently because it affects insulin levels). It worked for me without doing that, but I really had to cut the carbs down to zero in the induction phase to get ketosis to kick in without eliminating caffeine.
-- Alastair
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
> 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
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
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.
To the guy talking about losing 20 pounds in a week on Atkins - dude, you went into ketosis and dehydrated yourself. Nothing to do with the diet.
On the contrary, everything to do with the diet. The whole point of the induction phase of the diet is to throw you into ketosis -- you use ketostrips to check this. (And he's drinking plenty of water, so no dehydration.)
Certain metabolic diseases aside, ketosis is simply a sign that the body is burning stored fat rather than ingested sugar.
I agree with Barrett's conclusion - that most of the "success stories" of Atkins dieters are merely the logical end result result of caloric restriction,
No fsking way. I know in my case and others I've known on the diet their caloric intake went up. (Of course, that's calories as measured in the conventional food-calorie sense -- burn the food in a calorimeter bomb and calculate it that way, which certainly doesn't match what actually happens in the body.)
-- Alastair
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.
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.
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
(* Yes, and this injection results in people changing what they eat and their exercise pattern how? *)
Some skinney people eat like cows and never excercise. Some skinney people just don't have an appitite.
I don't know why skinney poeple are skinney, many without any effort. That is what this experiment would find out.
If you can decrease somebody's appetite so that food is not appealing, that may greatly help, for example.
Table-ized A.I.
running doesnt do anything to your metabolism.
lifting weights and building muscle is the only real way to increase metabolism.
Running mostly burns carbs and sugar for the first 45 minutes and most people unless they are marathon type athletes cant run for hours, not to mention you'll only burn a few hundred calories when its all over.
Its easier to just not eat those calories.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
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
anyone can have a maintainable diet.
Stop buying junkfood, only buy healthy food, eat the same exact 3 meals every single day in the same exact portions at the same exact time, think of food as fuel and not as something which is supposed to taste good.
You'll be ripped in a few months.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
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
(* You have no fucking clue what you're talking about *)
I am asking a *question* you idiot!
On the surface it seems like an easy problem to solve.
Besides, there is no evidence that being a bad spailer means one is bad at other things. Perhaps spelling is the *only* thing you are good at, and that is why you rub it in.
I spail bad just to piss yu off.
(bye bye mod points)
Table-ized A.I.
If you routinely have a high caffeine intake, don't quit cold turkey. Withdrawal can be painful (headache, mostly). Taper off.
Years ago I'd go through eight to ten cups of coffee a day weekdays (a couple at home, the rest at work) and go into near withdrawal on the weekends, end up with a splitting headache on Sundays.
Now I limit it to one or two cups of coffee and one or two cans of Diet Coke. I can drop it completely with no side effect beyond needing more sleep.
-- Alastair
Here's what I do:
I'm a cross country runner in high school. I am now training for the fall x/c season. 2 months ago, I had 15% body fat, well within the normal range, but I wanted to drop some.
So, in late May I started to cut out all junk foods, pop especially. Quitting drinking pop is very important. Pop is just a ton of empty calories that gets converted to fat. So anyway, I quit pop, and now I don't even like it anymore. Pop just seems gross and over-sweet to me now. Also, I began a fitness program. I run 1/2 hour to 1 hour a night, stretching before and afterwards, and doing an ab routine and push-ups.
I have gone down to 6% bodyfat (This is VERY low, but not unhealthy for runners). I used to be 135, but now I am 130 with much more muscle. I can also run a mile in 5:10 now.
One note about running: It is hard to sum up the willpower to run at first. However, once you get to be more in shape, it can be great fun, due to the "runner's high".
To someone who wants to lose weight, don't go on a diet. Just change your lifestyle a bit. When you go to the grocery store, buy apples and nectarines to satisfy your sweet tooth. Drink orange juice instead of pop. You don't have to revert to a vegan diet or anything. Just eat a balanced diet, but try to cut down on the doritos and pepsi. Exercise a little. Do something fun to exercise. Maybe ride your bike or play raquetball or something. When you get more fit, maybe try your luck at running.
Being healthy can be fun
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Exercise certainly helps, in many ways. But you've lost an average of 0.5 lbs a day. That's about 2500 calories' worth of fat over and above your normal caloric expenditure.
Unless you're biking uphill both ways, I don't think you can write all that off to exercise.
Of course, losing a big chunk of weight up front makes it that much easier to exercise, too.
-- Alastair
>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.
Roids will certainly help, by making it easier to maintain muscle mass during caloric deficit. Other drugs will help, as well.
Bodybuilders may look great, and the self-discipline they display is admirable. But the goal they're pursuing isn't "health", and if that's your goal, you should probably look elsewhere for role models.
"And exercise too, but do something fun. I don't know how people can ride stationary bikes or run on treadmills for an hour every day. The boredom kills me. I play racquetball and other active sports."
;)
I've set a personal goal (not to lose weight mind you) of running a marathon before I reach 30. I've been looking for ideas to make the training more interesting, and so far, I've found orienteering as something that I think I'd like to try in my area.
You're right: people need to live more active lives, which doesn't mean a quick fix at the gym. A radical way of becoming healthier is selling the motor car, but this doesn't seem to appeal to many Americans
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
You're confusing the Atkins diet and calorie restriction referenced by the post you replied to. Now some people imagine that CR does involve suffering (it doesn't for me though).
1900 = 1900. It's inescapable.
The constant "it's really complicated" or "you have to eat healthy foods, even if you don't like them" attitude it just as likely to knock someone off their diet as hunger is.
Hunger is actually easy to deal with. Defeatism, and dissatisfaction with my food are harder. I chose to go with "unhealthy" food in smaller quantities. It's worked really well (lost 105 lbs.), and I get to eat meat and cookies.
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.
And exercise too, but do something fun. I don't know how people can ride stationary bikes or run on treadmills for an hour every day. The boredom kills me. I play racquetball and other active sports
:-)
I agree with your basic assertion that we should eat healthy foods and exercise but, add a little warning about exercising.
Aerobic exercise will not make/help you lose weight unless you do an awful lot of it.
It will take almost an hour's strenuous exercise to burn off that Maars bar you wolfed down and burning off the calories from a Big Mac could take half a day or more.
The key to using exercise as a method of helping weight loss is to use resistance training rather than running or other aerobic exercises.
Every time you add an ounce of lean muscle to your body, your resting metabolic rate increases -- ie: you burn more calories without even exerting yourself.
By comparison, aerobic exercise tends to lower the body's "at rest" metabolic rate so you burn less energy.
Resistance exercising has the added advantage (for men) that you'll "bulk up" and get stronger. "What's that? Did you call me a geek? Come here and say that"
So, roll out those weights and get working.
You only have to do a 10-15 minute work-out, three times a week to have a really noticeable effect on your strength and your body shape.
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
OK - S T O P !
That's all you need. Ditch the low-fiber short-chain carbohydrates (ie, sugar, white bread and derivatives), and do some exercise. Amen.
Eating lots of protein will damage you, dropping the long-chain carbohydrates is also a bad idea.
It also bears mentioning that swimming is a safer, more effective (reaches more muscles, no load or impacts) exercise than running; if you do run, sandhills are good. And lift those weights carefully.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
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.
Weightlifting tends to put the most muscle on per time spent (as opposed to say running.)
Weight lifting is mostly upper body work, with the exceptions of a few lifts such as squats. Upper body work is great. But running is not to be overlooked either. It builds huge quads and calves. (I get much more leg results from running than I do from lifting) Your leg muscles are by far the largest in yor body, much larger than bi's, tri's, or pecs. So running can increase your muscle mass quite a bit, raising your metabolism, burning shitloads of calories in addition to those being burned by running itself.
I believe a complete physical fitness plan should include cardio workouts such as running along with weight training, preferably on alternating days.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
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
Some people lose weight for appearance. I try to lose it for health.
:-) I used to be, literally, fat and happy, because my blood chemistry looked good - so what, me worry?
:-).
The effects of excess body fat are not good for you. That fat screws up your blood lipids and sugar metabolism. The weight wears down your joints (of course, so does jogging
Then they found a few more factors (fasting blood insulin, CRP, HDL/LDL ratio) and all of a sudden I didn't look so good. And guess what! Body fat eems to correlate with those negative factors. Very low carbohydrate consumption lowers insulin and improves HDL/LDL ratio.
So I'm trying Atkins. I know lots of people who have used the Atkins approach and lost weight and then kept it off for years. I will be getting blood tests and looking at those effects also. We shall see. I am near Syndrome-X today...and I hope to change that!
Oh, for all you young guys out there (and I am NOT a young guy by far).... this stuff only gets worse as you get older! Your metabolism slows down. Exercise gets harder to do (and more painful with arthritis). Your blood chemistry goes to hell even without insult to it. It sucks.
And of course, I wonder what 35 years of sitting in front of computer screens has done to me ( or at least, my ass
But compared to not getting older.... hey, I'm not complaining!
John
The only good weather is bad weather.
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.
I lived in France for a few months, ate everything in sight, and didn't gain a pound. I was amazed. Those luncheon Pizza's followed by Creme Broule (sp?) or profiteroles only started my day! Dinner was 5 or 6 courses. All the most delicious food imaginable.
I also observed only ONE fat Frenchman the whole time I was there.
Actually, I think that the French execute fat people, or hide them in the Paris sewers, or something. I mean... only ONE fat Frenchman in 3.5 monthos of living in Paris?
Scary....
Now, if the French could just get their political sophistication up to their culinary sophistication...
ah... but that's another subject.
The only good weather is bad weather.
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?
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.
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
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
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?
Running 3-4 miles per day, can be very bad for you joins and back. I suggest skipping a day before you exercise, allowing your muscles to heal and rest.
The key is to increase your distance gradually.
I quit caffeine right about the same time I started on provigil, and I don't really recall suffering any bad side effects, other than a very mild headache at night as the provigil started to wear off.
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
...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!
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."
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.
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."
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
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
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 agree. Think of food as something which is supposed to taste good--in fact, get picky. Eat tasty, fresh, ripe fruit, lighly sauteed vegetables that still have crunch and flavor, fresh cooked fish/chicken/etc in your choice of herbs and sauces....
Avoid over-processed snack food which really tastes like salted (or sweetened) shit when you compare it to real food. Face it, do snack foods really taste that great, or do you just eat them out of habit and hunger pangs? And because they are the only thing in the vending machine/at the convenience store?
---dragoness
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
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.
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
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 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
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
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.
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?
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!
I think the atkins diet works for a lot of people because they can follow it and it removes sugar soda and other simple carbohydrates from their diet. I believe that if you want the benefits of the Atkins diet without the severely restricted food choices and high fat intake, you should consider reducing or eliminating simple carbohydrates.
personal attacks hurt, especially when deserved
Somewhere, a native american is laughing at us.
I've got the advangtage as a teen. But anyone under the age of forty still should be about as fit as a teenager.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
who wants to lose weight when you could be gaining weight for fabulous cash and prizes?
Enjoy
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
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.
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
Well, what you mention is typical of any sort of diet epidemiology... it is extremely difficult to rule out the variance. But, what you propose is supposition also. And ocean caught fish (which is most likely what they are eating in Hawaii) are unlikely to have those contaminants. Also, only mercury and heavy metals, of the contaminants that you mention, have been shown to be harmful to people. I know of no studies tying any of them to early alzheimers.
Yes, I know.... I really did mean to imply that PCB's, DDT and dioxin (well, there are really LOTS of different kinds of dioxins) have not been shown to be harmful in people. Are you shocked? THe media would make you think that minute trace exposures to these are deadly. WRONG!
The only good weather is bad weather.
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!
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.
Why in the world do you consider this factoid important or relevant?
This argument is simply stupid. Most of us aren't elite athletes, and what works for them won't necessarily work for us. If a normal person ate like Michael Jordan, they'd be fat as hell, because they don't get the degree of exercise that Jordan does. High-intensity exercise does indeed need carbohydrate for fuel. But most of us don't care for that sort of exercise.
Oh, and about the second-generation Asians thing: One good friend of mine is an second-generation Chinese girl who has lost something like 80 pounds, a gut, and two chins over the last year. On the Atkins diet.
False. The brain can also use ketone bodies (produced in low-carb situations) for fuel. While even in that situation, some glucose will be used by the brain, the bulk of its energy comes from ketones.
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.
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.
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.
Increased protein breakdown to maintain glucose levels will only be seen in the first few days of low-carbing. After that, tissues like the brain will have mostly switched over to burning ketones. So the need for glucose drops off quite a bit, and thus so does protein breakdown. Ketogenic diets can be quite muscle-sparing, as a result.
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:
Heh I actually rewrote that a couple of times because it sounded exactly like you're suggesting. Heh.
"Derp de derp."
I suppose it depends on what you like.
:-) )
I like what I can eat on this diet. I've never been a big bread fan. I view bread as something to dillute real food with, just like you would use water to dillute liquid. Just a psychological thing or some kind of ingrained preference, I guess.
I do personally know people who like some of the things you can't have on this diet.
But compared to low-fat diets, I can eat a lot and never feel hungry. I've tried low fat diets before and it never works. On Atkins I've lost 60 lbs and still going. (By the time The Matrix Reloaded starts showing, I am on track to be down to zero!
I personally like some things I can't have like potato chips and french fries. Oh well, in time I'll be able to have them. Right now, I eat one or two occaisionally just for a taste.
Believe me, this diet is better than starving, and then finally going on an eating binge and gaining all that weight back.
I can do without most juices. Crystal Light has zero of everything, including carbohydrates. (Check out the label -- pure chemicals.) I can have all the cheeseburgers (no bun) that I want. All the spices I want. Certian low-carb taco shells just loaded with meat. Extra meat, spices, salsa, cheese, etc. on the side (no shell). Eat until I'm full -- no, stuffed. A couple chips don't hurt. (2g x 2 = 4g. Sometimes three for 6g.)
Oh, btw, I do have a sandwitch for breakfast. Two slices of cheese and one of egg between two "buns" of sausage, all wrapped in paper to keep fingers from grease. Yum, yum. I suppose it depends on what you like. I'm definitely healthier and feel better. Lab results are great now.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
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.
Typical republican logic.
Some plants are poisonous.
All plants are natural.
No pesticides are natural.
Therefore no pesticides are poisonous.
War is necrophilia.