Most effective way to lose weight???

[John Harrison]

Adkins and others make the mistake of demonizing carbohydrates, which the body needs. The problem isn't with all carbohydrates, it's with cheap/simple carbohydrates.

The current American diet contains too much cheap carbohydrate (white flour, sugar and it's other coded names, etc.). Fruits and vegetables (complex carbohydrates) don't make people fat. Eliminating them, when we already don't eat enough, is downright dangerous, as there's no other dietary source to provide the nutrients they provide.

Approximately 60% of our dietary calories should come from quality carbohydrate sources (whole grains, fruits, and vegetables). Most Americans simply don't do that. What we do eat is fried, slathered in fatty flavorings, filled with trans-fatty acids and cheap calories, or processed to the point where there's little nutrition left. There are high and low quality foods in every food group. "Convenience foods" are among the worst culprits.

We've simply become too busy to take the time to make healthy choices and prepare healthy meals. Plus, we overeat and under-exercise.

Sure there are many companies who want to sell you a magic pill, powder, or potion, or a diet that will do all the work for you. But, that's just plain voodoo (and doo doo!). They make a lot of money off us, though.

[3rdDIY]

The reason I said,"Don't weigh yourself" is because of my esteemed spousal unit, the Diet addict.
She starves herself to her goal, then rewards herself for being a good girl. "Just a leetle choc'late!"

Unfortunately, she's a diabetic.

My 14 year old and I stopped drinking soda about a month and a half ago. We're not sure why. We just did.
Now we can't stand the stuff, particularly the poorly mixed stuff at the restaurants.
Actually, I have trouble with Kool-Aid now.

We do water. By the case.

And a little unsweetened juice.

Oddly enough, we are eating less often.

And Heineken for some reason, tastes a lot better.

Now if I can just get off the Pall Malls. Anyone got a clue about that?

[Adam Waldron]

Dunno about you lot, but nothing helps me drop a few kilos better that deleting beer from the diet....

Swap beer for wine. Works wonders for me. Yeah, wine is full of calories too, but you just can't drink it like you can drink beer.

Cheers,

Adam

[Roger Alburn]

Maybe you've heard of this one. It was the basis of a (probably rather thin) book about twenty years ago.

The author placed $5000 in a trust, to be paid to a certain widely reviled political organization, if he didn't lose seventy pounds before a specified date.

I once did a variation of this, by donating the money I saved quitting smoking for a year, to an organization important to me.

In any case, I suspect wanting to lose is more important than how you do it.

[Flyfender]

Our diets were not meant to exclude fruits or vegetables with carbohydrates. Variation is what we need! I tried the low carb diet to drop 15 xtra pounds I have. The weight does come off, but I found in the long run, it's just not a diet I can LIVE with. I ended up watching what I eat M-Friday then letting it loose on the weekend. In my case, if I deprive myself of certain foods, it's gonna make me crave em bad eventually. Karate few times a week, healthrider on the weekends, seems to work. I maintain a plateau. My body seems to have that "set point" theory(your body has a comfortable weight that it has a propensity to stay at). We as Americans, love to eat.(the Food Channel ect.) It takes a combination of things to beat back the food demons. Discipline, lifestyle,commitment. All easier said that done. Nothing is going to work for everyone. The low carb craze is nothing new, it's just been so long, people have forgotten. It's came and went before, and it will do it again. Good luck to everyone, I know it's a SOB to lose weight.

[Steve McGinnis]

I agree with Silverface, although I would add eating better. What does eat better mean?

Minimize sugar.
Minimize alcohol.
Minimize prepared foods (eating out and anything that didn't come from the earth).
avoid fried foods.

If you have a craving for something in the above category, go ahead, but make it a one time episode, not a habit.

As far as Atkins goes, It does work, but only temporarily. I know 5 people (myself included) who tried it, and were successful in losing weight, we all gained it back. It just didn't work as a long term solution for us.

[Geo]

Speaking of dropping Soda Pop, etc., Here is another article/study
thing on that.

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news...pop&floc=wn-ns

[Charlie Bernstein]

wow. this is a tough issue for so many people. i live in maine, one of the fattest states.

here's a few things i've done. any or all of them can help - take your pick!

exercise is good. if you want a work-out, here's the absolute best single (easy!) thing you can do:

- give your tv to goodwill.

and what about eating less? not important! what's important isn't eating less, but differently. for instance, if you cut out:

- food with sugar
- deep-fried food
- red meat
- butter and margarine

then anything you replace it with (even carbs) will be a huge improvement. fresh fruit and veggies are really, really, really great for weight. they drive away depression, too.

and if you can replace white flour and white rice with whole-grain flour and brown rice, you'll really be cooking.

but if changing your diet is too much work, there's other ways to eating differently. little things that have worked for me in a huge way:

- putting my fork down between bites.
- putting my sandwich down between bites.
- eating popcorn one piece at a time.

by slowing down, you don't just eat less. you taste more.

last but not least, a controversial item. i'm weighing in with one boy's opinion:

- throw away your scale! you're not competing! trust me, no one cares what your scale says except people in your boat, and you need to jump ship. (anyhow, swimming is good excercise!)

besides, paying attention to little numbers misses the whole point: with any kind of compulsion or disorder, dwelling on it just magnifies it. you'll still be all about weight. what a boring reason to live!

as slave to a scale, you're still stuck on weight whether you're fat or thin. but when you stop thinking about your weight and how you look, you'll be amazed at what other things your life will have room for.

don't drive yourself crazy turning your life upside down all at once. just try 'em one or two at a time. take it easy. this isn't a race. fast weight loss never sticks. get there in your own good time. enjoy the trip. smell the roses. live long and prosper!

and then enjoy telling people how you did it!

[Annie D.]

Get a divorce. Then dance like a heathen till the cows come home at every opportunity.

[ge_trojan]

May 2003, I stood 6' 4" and weighed in at 288 lbs at the doctor's office. He and I agreed that I might profit from losing some weight. He prescribed a diet that "he" was on from Texas Tech University. It is basically a low carb diet.
I tend to go overboard with things, in 5 weeks I lost 33 lbs. After about six months, I was about 225. I have "stabilized" around that point. I generally felt better, actual increase in energy, etc.

I intend to lose more, getting harder. I do feel that I am better for it all.

I weigh myself at the same time every morning and think that is very important, differing from some opinions here.

George

It's about will power with me.

By the way, I'm 52.

[sparky]

may not be practical for every-one; it was when I quit a desk-job and took a temporary job loading lorries. Like eight hours a night working out AND getting pad for it as motivation. I swapped a lot of fat for quite a bit of muscle. My team-mate did it because he was a semi-pro kick-boxer who couldn't afford enough gym-time.

[jam]

You've all made terrific points, but I'd like to address tellypicker's: that of food addiction and the psychological component.

Food is fuel. Somehow we Americans have lost sight of this fact and look to food for the good feelings we get from it. Sugars trigger some dopamine release in the brain or something and we've become addicted to it. The way we eat makes about as much sense, to hammer the fuel point into the ground, as spraying ten gallons of gas all over a filled-up car.

Keep this in mind as you watch TV or listen to the radio. There are huge corporate entities out there spending millions of dollars to train you to consume their product. This is not an accident, or even a shot in the dark; it is carefully designed and crafted. McDonald's doesn't care about your health, beyond keeping you healthy enough to keep pumping your money into their machine.

The thing to do is rehabituate yourself. If you feel the impulse to eat and it's not "official"--i.e., a mealtime, or in response to genuine hunger--do ten pushups or twenty-five situps. Get used to filling the void with small bursts of exercising instead of bursts of eating. Eventually you'll come to crave it: instead of "man, could I go for a Snickers", it'll be "man, I could go for a quick mile".

I'm 6'0" and was creeping up on 260 at the end of last year. My lifestyle was 99% sedentary and I was just eating stupid: scarfing down whatever was around the house out of boredom half the time. Once none of my clothes fit anymore I declared war. I would be damned if I was going to buy new clothes because I was getting fat. So with the new year I got regular at the gym and just stopped putting things in my mouth without a reason. My dieting could still use some cleaning up--I still go to the kitchen when I shouldn't sometimes--but I'm down to 235 and I feel like a more lot of that is muscle than it used to be.

One thing that I really hated was realizing that by habitually "proactively eating" I'd actually forgotten what it was to be hungry. That was a humiliating thought, especially looking around the world as a whole.

Eat less, sweat more. The only way.

JAM

[genelovesjez]

Sit in a really low chair. I was painting in my new house on the weekend, and I stopped for a food break. The only chair I had in the house was a low folding chair. When I ate at the table, my stomach was compressed, and I got full really fast (until I decided to eat standing up).

[JBandtheSalts]

take in nothing but juice water and like broth for a few weeks, people actually do it all the time to just clear out their systems and youll loose weight, and you wont be hungry because your stomach is full (of fluid), theres quite a few websites on it as well if you look around, it is also safe, esp. if you only do it for 2 or 3 weeks, some people do it for 2 or 3 months, anyway, i did it last year after i got paralized, not to loose weight, but my body just didnt know how to function properly, and so by doing that for a couple of weeks, it kinda reset my system...-john

[TheGoodTexan]

Originally Posted by genelovesjez

Sit in a really low chair. I was painting in my new house on the weekend, and I stopped for a food break. The only chair I had in the house was a low folding chair. When I ate at the table, my stomach was compressed, and I got full really fast (until I decided to eat standing up).

That's almost as funny as a bunny with a pancake on his head.