Rejecting Dieting

hannah899

one other thing 'ive noticed, Which I have my nan to thank with all the baking as a child an all the basic lessons she taught me growing up and continues to teach me about. The size of teaspoons I like the little old style 5ml teaspoons. These "fancy" new cuttelry sets the teaspoons are well over 5ml. I would assume there maybe 10ml, There bigger and deeper. I can tell but there is a lot of people in my generation who don't seem to be able to. And if im right in assuming they are 10ml and people still put 2 in their drinks wouldn't that be the equivalent to 4 teaspoons 40-50 years ago? I may be wrong

cakeforbrains

Prothet_of_Doom wrote: »

Having reached a glorious 115Kg last year I did the following:

Classified food into 3 groups :

A Worth eating.
B Not worth eating.
C A treat but not worth eating.

So cakes : C
Sugar in coffee : B
Lean Meat : A
Pasta, fruit, veg: A
McD's Breakfast : B
Cereals : A

Pick a food, and decide if it's A, b or C. Only buy if A

And then set myself a half hour exercise a day, and no more than 1800 calories, and a 80 KG target.

I got to 90Kg, and it fell apart, due to change of contracts, xmas, greed, laziness etc and am back to 96kg, but my fitness levels are better, so I'm restarting, with renewed optimism.

I thought about not replying to this, but I have to admit that this last paragraph concerns me a little.

It sounds like what you did it ban yourself from having certain foods. Quite a lot of foods. And, at the same time, in order to only eat 1800kcals per day you must have been quite strict over weighing and portioning everything else that you ate. This is a diet.

And it worked. Of course it worked...for a while. But I would argue that the reason it then failed (and IT failed, not you) was because it encouraged you to move away from listening to your body and towards adhering to a strict list of rules. It might be that since 'giving up' the diet you've turned back to the foods on your banned list with renewed gusto. That understandable. We always covet and lust after the things we 'can't' have. And it happens time after time with dieting. That's one of the reasons why diets, although basically scientifically sound, just don't work, and why people who serial diet tend to end up fatter than they were when they started.

Another reason why diets don't work is that they don't allow you to address the emotional reasons why you are eating, or the emotional reasons why you are fat. You lost 25kgs. That's a lot of weight. It might have been that there was part of you that actually wasn't comfortable in your new weight. Maybe you felt vulnerable, or exposed, or expected to behave in a certain way. When you eat intuitively, losing weight very slowly and listening to your body's signals you can find yourself sitting at a weight for a while, seeing how it feels, becoming comfortable with it. There's a lot of psychological work to be done. People assume that being slimmer will feel completely positive, but it doesn't always.

Anyway, I really hope you haven't taken my comments badly. I am not criticising. I have been there. I spent over a decade repeatedly dieting, weighing, measuring, drawing weight-loss charts. I'm really switched on, I know how to cook, I know about nutrition...and yet I've still ended up many stones heavier than I was when I started. And I've spent so many hours hating myself and chastising myself for being lazy and greedy. It's only since I found out about intuative eating (or whatever you want to call it) that I've begun to drop those layers and layers of baggage and hatred. I eat everything I like. Nothing is banned. I feel no guilt, and yet I am consistently and slowly dropping weight and have been for months. I feel like this is something I could actually do for the rest of my life.

BugglyB

cakeforbrains wrote: »

I just wondered whether anyone else subscribes to the philosophy of rejecting diets and/or health at every size (HAES).

I read Fat is a Feminist Issue a few years ago. It's a book dedicated to the notion that diets essentially make us fatter over time, and the most healthy way to eat is to respond to your body's hunger cues and move away from emotional eating. There are several other books, websites, and blogs centered around this idea.

Anyway, I'm not trying to lecture or cause an argument, but I was just wondering if anyone else rejects dieting and addresses their eating in this way? :beer:

Hi cakeforbrains,

Yes I have rejected diets.

Previously I have tried numerous diets, atkins, low gi, grapefruit, slimfast, cabbage soup, paleo, slimming world etc.

This time last year I made a conscious effort to stop.

I work three days a week so make sure those days I have a healthy breakfast and healthy lunch and just fruit for snacks. The rest of the time I eat whatever I choose, some days I have cake three times a day, other days I don't snack at all.

I cycle to work (about 30 miles in total per week), swim twice a week and do a circuit training class once a week.

In the last year I have lost two stone, from a size 18 to a size 12. And finally I am happy. Not just thinner but stronger, fitter and faster

BugglyB

LolitaLove wrote: »

Your body is not an instrument designed purely for men to gawp at, or a hanger for clothes designed to suit the figure of a ten year old boy. Your body is a beautiful, miraculous thing that allows you to ride horses, swim, travel...to experience all of the wonderful aspects life has to offer.

This is a wonderful way of putting it and so true.

My body exists not for people to look at but so I can run, climb, dance, play, make love, eat, sing and generally enjoy my life.

Mr_helpful

adouglasmhor wrote: »

Of course someone in their late 30s was old in Anglo Saxon times. Just the sort of culture i would look at for heath advice.

Part of the reason they were old at 30 was that they kept having tribal punch ups. However some lived to good age if they were good at war or just plain lucky. They didnt seem to die of diabetes though and one thing is certain they didnt play around with useless calorie controlled diets.
Funnily enough they are always depicted as quite thin apart from the lords who had enough money to pay for men to do their fighting which meant they no longer needed to be slim

adouglasmhor

Mr_helpful wrote: »

Part of the reason they were old at 30 was that they kept having tribal punch ups. However some lived to good age if they were good at war or just plain lucky. They didnt seem to die of diabetes though and one thing is certain they didnt play around with useless calorie controlled diets.
Funnily enough they are always depicted as quite thin apart from the lords who had enough money to pay for men to do their fighting which meant they no longer needed to be slim

They were thin because they spent a lot of their life starving, bone analyses back this up. As for the lords, surviving armour shows most of them were around the size of many small Asians today, comparatively bigger than the hoi poloi but not huge.An example Fletcher Pratt the Sci Fi and History writer and former professional flyweight boxer was allowed to try on the Armour of King Francois I by the curator of the Louvre (I know not Saxon and post Norman around Henry VIII time) , It was too small except the shoulders (which were well developed by the armed exercise from an early age), King Francois was looked on as a very large man at the time, Pratt was 5'3" and under 8 stone at the time.

pogofish

I totally rejected dieting around fifteen years ago after a botched-up medical procedure left me in decidedly wobbly condition and the medics told me to get used to being a cripple. They then went to suggest yet another impossible diet that aimed for an utterly unfeasible weight that was calculated solely from BMI charts, with no reference to my actual body type.

Within eighteen months, I'd got pretty much my full health, movement and fitness back and since then, my weight has never gone outside a half-stone range over ideal, even though I've become disabled from another condition in the last three years.

terra_ferma

If anyone is interested this book is FREE because of a special offer (ending today, unfortunately), from someone who embraced an intuitive eating, HAES type of lifestyle.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=63624561&postcount=523

Gorgeously Full Fat - Live like you love yourself
Sarah Clark
"Back in 1987, when Margaret Thatcher was still in charge, the Pet Shop Boys were number one, and I was just 16, I went on my very first diet. This is the story of how I got sucked into the diet trap, and how long it took me to escape its clutches."

Anoneemoose

terra_ferma wrote: »

If anyone is interested this book is FREE because of a special offer (ending today, unfortunately), from someone who embraced an intuitive eating, HAES type of lifestyle.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=63624561&postcount=523

Gorgeously Full Fat - Live like you love yourself
Sarah Clark
"Back in 1987, when Margaret Thatcher was still in charge, the Pet Shop Boys were number one, and I was just 16, I went on my very first diet. This is the story of how I got sucked into the diet trap, and how long it took me to escape its clutches."

Thanks, just ordered it and it has magically appeared in my kindle menu!

jamessmith4152

Dieting may have an adverse effect on your health.You should have balance diet to become healthy dieting is not a solution to reduce your weight.Your eating habbits should be good.So we sould not do excess dieting it can cause weakness in your body.


Thanks

James