Debt Free & Fat Free Wannabees??

MinnieSpender

OK fellow cuddlees. In the battle to beat the bulge, there is the danger of forgetting what's GOOD about ourselves.

Question: What do you LIKE about yourselves?

I like my eyelashes, my hair and my ability to walk in high heels. I like that fact that while it's all a bit squiggy, it all works (and wow! am I grateful for that too!). I like my dress sense and sense of humour.

Time for a love in! What makes you happy or grateful?

grimelda

I'm getting pretty good at table football.

I'm reasonably intelligent and have a sarcastic sense of humour which amuses me if nobody else.

Good topic MinnieSpender!

LookingAhead

MinnieSpender wrote:

OK fellow cuddlees. In the battle to beat the bulge, there is the danger of forgetting what's GOOD about ourselves.

Question: What do you LIKE about yourselves?

Time for a love in! What makes you happy or grateful?

I like my ability to always count my blessings (after a prudent amount of time stomping about - which doesn't usually last long!) and keep things in perspective. I don't get too upset about a lot of the petty stuff in life.

Physically what do I like about myself...? Not a lot!! I'm 35 with no lines around my eyes or mouth at all, not the faintest hint of a wrinkle....which a lot of friends hate me for! So I guess that is something.

Now I have written that, I will wake up tomorrow looking like an old leather handbag I know it.... :rolleyes:

Erm, that's about it really. I can moan about absolutely everything else I think...!

Lemon_Tree

Hi
I hope you'll let me join this selected club, i have half my body weight to lose and now have lost 8.5lb, not much but a start.
Lem

kathfisch

Ooh, positive things about my appearance! I don't really think about very often so thanks minniespender!

I like my hair, especially now that I'm growing it long again. Its a golden brown colour (or so my mum puts it :rotfl: ) and wavy, definitely the thing I like best. I like the way my top half looks pretty much but things go a bit wrong from the waist down :rotfl:

Grimelda, thank you for your very interesting contributions about the Atkins diet, its good to have people on both sides of the argument who can put their case well. I haven't done any research on the subject but have always felt that an unbalanced diet (in terms of food groups) can't really be a positive thing to do.

Modern culture demands quick fixes for everything, laziness and impatience seem to be the order of the day!! I realise Atkins was first developed many years ago but has recently come back into 'fashion' as it were - promoted (be it officially or through word of mouth) as 'easy', a 'quick fix', 'eat as much as you like' etc. Well, to me, anything that's worth doing takes hard work and anything that seems too good to be true probably is.

So Atkins is not something I'll ever consider. The principals of a generally healthy diet and lifestyle are quite widely accepted I think; balance, moderation, plenty of exercise etc. I'm not qualified or particularly knowledgeable about these things but that is what I understand. Personally I am simply trying to improve my health through changing my habits (eating and exercise ones) but many are finding WW and the like very helpful in planning and regulating their meals, which is great. I have said it before, I want this diet/lifestyle to be a permanent change of habit for me, not a 'quick fix' that I can't sustain and end up worse than I am now. I am making the changes slowly and even if it takes years to get to my ideal weight that's infinitely preferable to going up and down in weight and feeling even more out of control. I've started exercising 3 times a week and chose swimming because I enjoy it, its not a chore. I'm trying to cut out the unhealthy or excessive parts of my diet and increase the healthy things, like fruit, that I like. I've always enjoyed foods like fruit, salad and home cooked meals - I just got into the habit of eating rubbish. In short - I'm changing to a lifestyle I prefer, its not a chore and therefore I'm more likely to stick with it.

Anyway, sorry for the essay The discussions about Atkins and posts by Amos have got me thinking.... end up rambling on :rotfl: I find it helpful though so hope you bear with me

Have a good day tomorrow everyone

kathfisch

Lemon_Tree wrote:

Hi
I hope you'll let me join this selected club, i have half my body weight to lose and now have lost 8.5lb, not much but a start.
Lem

Welcome to the club Lemon Tree

8.5lb lost is a fabulous start, round of applause :T :j

Are you following any particular diet or plan? Do you have any specific exercise you are doing/thinking of doing? Sorry for being nosey just wondering if you've got any tips for the rest of us

amosworks

grimelda wrote:

Unlike your 'supportive' friends in real life who make whale noises and whom you admire and strive to emulate?

Oh no lol, that's just one guy but he's allowed to as he's perfect. He can do what he wants to anyone really lol.

grimelda wrote:

On a positive note, I do have to say that your skin looks great for someone who once weighed 21 stone! :j

Yeah thanks, I suppose I've always been lucky to have good skin but since I've cut out a lot of the bad things I've eaten and since I started drinking lots of water it really made a nice difference. I'd recommend it to anyone!!

grimelda wrote:

But humans only began domesticating animals for food 9000-7000 years ago.

Humans have been eating animals for a lot longer than that, I'm not talking about domestication but about hunting.

grimelda wrote:

If you cook your meat instead of eating it raw it's even more unnatural because you are destroying some of its vitamin content. High carb foods aren't the only ones which are processed.

Yes it's quite true and you make some very good points. I fear we may take over the thread to debate them all but something that interest me as a diet option before Atkins and something you may like to research that covers all of what we've mentioned and more is the "Neanderthin" diet. It too promoted uncooked meat and I must admit, it was a 50/50 decision between that and Atkins (I'm pagan BTW).

grimelda wrote:

And I'm not even going to start on how 'unnatural' dairy foods are.

Haha I love you, I don't touch most dairy products, the very thought of them actually disgusts me. I've not drunk milk for at least a decade, even the smell of it is gross. How someone can happily consume the secreted juice from another mammals teet that was designed for suckling their young and spray it on their breakfast food makes me want to pass out. I think the only good milk for humans to drink is human breast milk, and obviously only until the child can eat solidy. No "bitty" jokes please people

grimelda wrote:

So no, natural selection is not a long term study supporting low carb diets. Not at all. Even if pre-agrarian humans ate high protein/low carb diets, present day protein sources aren't the same as paleolithic ones. What natural selection demonstrates is that humans can survive and thrive on a very wide variety of foods.

Of course humans are omnivoures which has contributed to us being the most successful species on the planet, but natural selection is what enabled us to be omnivoures. When food is consumed it's broken down to its usable base components, so it doesn't matter to any great degree whether you eat a chicken or a cow, the body can extract the base proteins from the food. Therefore if the animals that were around then and now are slightly different, it's not of great significance. We too have changed over the eons and have grown less hairier and taller (as a general rule of thumb but I know some people who would make you think that hobbits weren't fictional hahaha). What I mean to say is that if something in the past didn't work out then we wouldn't be around to observe the results as the future would be different (this is cosmology 101 ), so the fact we can see the results that we didn't always consume bread and mars bars shows that we were successful in eating the things I've already covered.

grimelda wrote:

Spacey was my shorthand. What she really said was that most of her Atkins clients complained of lethargy and poor mental alertness. I don't know of any studies about the effect of Atkins on mental acuity but I'd imagine it would be fairly easy to test. In the meantime, I have only to go on what this professional nutritionist told me, and the fact that the brain NEEDS glucose to work. Even during fasting it can't run entirely on ketones.

I have met many people who do the diet incorrectly or say they have "done" Atkins, and most often didn't really understand what was happening. The brain doesn't need glucose to work, if you compare glucose and ketones you will find they are molecularly similar and all mammal cells can use both as a completely source of energy; they can both enter cells efficiently to do this. However, the only downside is to glucose comes with the insulin spike as you mentioned that causes them to be stored as fat on the body. Ketones on the other hand cause no such spike and excess ketones are urinated out naturally.

I find it strange to think that your nutritionist friend failed to note the majority of the nation that plonk themselves in front of the television and stuff themselves full of junk food. Of course, lethargy and poor mental alertness are the last beneficial qualities that come to mind

I think any test will easily find that people who "feel the Atkins change" require less sleep, don't get as tired or worn down so quickly and are able to outperform themselves both mentally and physically to a noticable difference just after a few months from switching from a high carb to a low carb diet. I do partly suspect that the increase of Omega oils due to the nature of the diet will taint the results slightly so any fair test should probably exclude this in the diet.

grimelda wrote:

She also noted more tangible problems such as brittle and peeling fingernails, hair loss and constipation.

I can't really dispute this as I've never heard it mentioned before, I have only noticed an improvement in my teeth. But constipation is something that gets mentioned often and is usually as a result of the dieter not following the diet and consuming the required amount of vegetables and good carbs which often come attached to fibre. Personally, I never had this problem and if you've ever watched what Gillian Mackeith makes people do, I'm pretty sure she would find that the before Atkins and after Atkins "samples" would be changed to something she would undoubtedly be more impressed by :rotfl: :rotfl:

grimelda wrote:

Hm. One of the selling points of low carb I often hear is now unnecessary exercise is ('Eat all you want, don't exercise and STILL LOSE WEIGHT!'). As I don't have a copy of Atkins at hand, though, I can't refute your point.

Yeah I think it's more of a black market selling point. Whilst it's actually true, I think rarely it's something that ever gets done. Like the promise of all you can eat, dieters really don't want to eat all they can because of the points you already mentioned. As I said, people with lots of excess energy will be twitchy and want to do things, whether a selling point was no exercise or not I suppose it's like stabbing yourself in the back hehe. Don't forget that the Atkins advice has been changed since the 70's as more has become known about healthy eating, for example the book now no longer recommends eating lots of meats high in salts and nitrates. The latest copy of the book, which I have, does recommend quite a bit of exercise.

I'm glad that I've found someone who knows a lot about nutrition and diet, and I would definitely recommend you supplement yourself with info on the Neanderthin diet as it too turns some myths on their head with regards to true health and natural food, like as you mentioned, it being mainly raw and a lack of dairy products Mmmm, raw meat.

lol
x

kathfisch

amosworks wrote:

Oh no lol, that's just one guy but he's allowed to as he's perfect. He can do what he wants to anyone really lol.

The rest of your post I don't have the knowledge to comment on but couldn't not mention this.

What gives anyone the right to treat you badly? No one should be allowed to do that! The fact that you say he is perfect doesn't excuse putting other people down, especially when they are meant to be your friend. He sounds anything but perfect to be honest, one to be avoided. It seems a shame that you describe him as perfect, do you not see that he is being horrible to you? If SS's well meaning (if direct) comments upset you so much, what are this guys comments doing to you?

I'm sorry, I don't want this to turn into an argument or to take over the point of the thread. I'm compelled to say what I think but will try to restrain myself.

bargainqueen_2

Welcome back Amos. Interesting discussion you guys have got, but I definitely won't be joining the raw meat diet
Just a point MS_London was it you thinking about buying one of those scales with the body fat percentage? I've got one of them and rarely use at but...wait for it....my percentage last time I used it was39!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How scary is that! It makes me clinically obese even if my BMI doesnt :0)
Things I like about myself? My eyes, my hair, my choice of boyfriend (lol sometimes) Oh I think I am ok as a person really, shame about the packaging! But hey we're working on that right?
Kath I loved your post about how you are gradually changing everything even if it takes years, what a healthy attitude to have!

fizzel81

thank you for the welcome, i have decided that thursday will be my day to start cutting down