the men who made us thin

welshdent

Dieting is not the answer. Lifestyle change is. Be that adopting a healthier more balanced intake of food (notice I dont say diet!) or exercising more ... or ideally both. It needs to be something sustainable and "diets" are not. They do not deal with the root cause of the problem which is a lifestyle not conducive to being healthy. THat may be down to a number of varying reasons but unless you address those issues and make the necessary changes you will continue to yoyo from one fad to the next

Mr_helpful

angelil wrote: »

Thor just said what I was going to. C4 did a programme about Weight Watchers not that long ago and their frankly crappy premise was based on exactly that: diet 'failure' being the fault of the diet itself, not the dieter. Sounds like this programme was equally well "researched".

The failure is with the diet. If you look at weight watchers it is designed to fail. Weight watchers is owned by a company that makes its own brand foods. These are nutritionally derelect and full of sugar. A WW angel cake has a little more sugar than some snickers bars per 100g:eek:
Yes people will at first lose weight by starving their body of vital nutrients but after a while the body fights back.. People should really start suing their weight watcher reps.

thor

Mr_helpful wrote: »

Diets dont work because restricting food is likely to make the body think that food is in short supply and so activate yout fat hormones. This is the fault of the diet.

It all depends on how much you restrict. Obviously if you reduce intake down to unrealistic levels i.e. 1000 cals per day then a) it will be hard to maintain and b) will force the body into starvation mode BUT nobody is going to tell me that an obese/morbidly obese person cutting down to the average consumption of about 2000 to 2500 cals won't lose weight in the long term.
Fat people generally claim that the likes of Weight Watchers or Slimming World will ultimately result in weight gain but there is no need to go down that route. Too much food got them fat so eating less has to be the answer. A 25 stone man did not reach that size on 2000 cals per day.

Mr_helpful

thor wrote: »

It all depends on how much you restrict. Obviously if you reduce intake down to unrealistic levels i.e. 1000 cals per day then a) it will be hard to maintain and b) will force the body into starvation mode BUT nobody is going to tell me that an obese/morbidly obese person cutting down to the average consumption of about 2000 to 2500 cals won't lose weight in the long term.
Fat people generally claim that the likes of Weight Watchers or Slimming World will ultimately result in weight gain but there is no need to go down that route. Too much food got them fat so eating less has to be the answer. A 25 stone man did not reach that size on 2000 cals per day.

The problem is with focusing on calories in vs calories out. There are several flaws with this. Firstly just because you put 2000 cals in doesnt mean they are all going to be absorbed into the body. many factors affect absorbtion. the next problem is that foods take varying amounts of calories to process. just as an example 200 cals of glucose is going to act differently in the body to 200 cals of sucrose or 200 cals of baked beans or 200 cals from corn on the cob.
Then we have temperature. the body uses most of its cals keeping you at the right temp. fat is an insulator and will get used when body decides it wants to slow metabolism and keep warm at the same time.
The reasons for natural weight gain (as opposed to gain from medivation) is in the brain. If you give you brain any reason to save calories then it will and it will crave calorie rich foods. (often the same foods that have little nutritional value) This means that you are now at war with unconscious processes in your brain and that also means the odds are on you losing long tem.
The sensible way to lose weight long term is to get rid of the reasons you body wants to be fat and then feed it all the nutrients it needs. Once you get in this state losing fat is easy.
Diets like fasting 5 :2 waffle on about hormonal changes without realising these changes are far easier to create just from 10 minutes simple visualisation.. The lowering of insulin takes place naturally overnight if you dont fill yourself with carbs before you go to sleep
I dont think any one will deny you can lose weight by restricting cals to less than you use but how do you know what your body is going to use in a day? Your brain will quite happily make you lethargic and slow up metabolism if it doesnt want you to lose fat.

Mojisola

Mr_helpful wrote: »

The problem is with focusing on calories in vs calories out. There are several flaws with this. Firstly just because you put 2000 cals in doesnt mean they are all going to be absorbed into the body. many factors affect absorbtion.
the next problem is that foods take varying amounts of calories to process. just as an example 200 cals of glucose is going to act differently in the body to 200 cals of sucrose or 200 cals of baked beans or 200 cals from corn on the cob.

Then we have temperature. the body uses most of its cals keeping you at the right temp. fat is an insulator and will get used when body decides it wants to slow metabolism and keep warm at the same time.

In these examples, I've got to agree with Mr Helpful, although it's not just temperature that the body uses calories for - it's all the body processes - those nerve signals take energy, pumping your blood around takes energy, digesting your food takes energy, etc.

I would add gut bacteria as another factor in the mix. There's a lot of interesting research going on into the effect that different mixes of gut bacteria have on weight control - both because different bacteria handle the food differently and so people will absorb varying amounts of calories from the same food and also because some bacteria cause messages to go to the brain, switching on the "eat more" signals.

It's not going to be a magic bullet but it is another aspect to take into account.

Calories in, calories out may work at the very macro level - (anyone on 10,000 calories a day will put on weight; anyone on 500 will lose weight) but at the levels that most of us consume there are other factors which affect what use our bodies make of the food we eat.

Mojisola

Also - calories are worked out by burning food but our guts don't consume all foods to the same level. Some foods are absorbed easily and quickly and we use all the calories; others are mostly absorbed but more slowly and the body reacts differently to these; others are much harder to break down and so some of the calories they contain pass out of the body completely.

So we could use all of 1000 calories consisting of easily digested and easily absorbed food whereas if we ate 1000 calories of raw vegetables, we'd absorb a lot less.

angelil

Mr_helpful wrote: »

The failure is with the diet. If you look at weight watchers it is designed to fail. Weight watchers is owned by a company that makes its own brand foods. These are nutritionally derelect and full of sugar. A WW angel cake has a little more sugar than some snickers bars per 100g:eek:
Yes people will at first lose weight by starving their body of vital nutrients but after a while the body fights back.. People should really start suing their weight watcher reps.

But you don't have to use WW products. You can follow their diet and lose weight very successfully without ever touching a single WW product (I should know - I lost weight for my wedding 2.5 years ago using them, without using a single WW product or attending a single meeting, and have kept it off.)

Have you ever followed the WW diet? I suspect not.

RichardD1970

Mr_helpful wrote: »

Diets like fasting 5 :2 waffle on about hormonal changes without realising these changes are far easier to create just from 10 minutes simple visualisation..

I've seen you mention this a few times, could you elaborate as to how you achieve this?

Mr_helpful

RichardD1970 wrote: »

I've seen you mention this a few times, could you elaborate as to how you achieve this?

Good question. the language of your brain is pictures (even if you think you are no visual) I use self hypnosis but if you dont like that you can call it meditation deep relaxation or even yoga. The aim is to get brain in alpha state where change can take place more efficiently. Then I just visualised things like a world of abundance and somethimes I visualised things such as a thinnner body or perhaps being chased while jogging through the woods. every thought carries a chemical signal. I am not far off my ideal now as 6 pack is coming back though I would say I eat well over the recommended amount of calories in a day. I can only guess though because I dont count them for the reasons in my post and others above. The post by Mojisola was very good. and quite true as to what he said about calories on the macro level. Yes anyone eating 500 a day will lose weight but they will also lose a lot more in the way of health but most likely their body will intervene and they would give up. However 2000 cals of high quality food providing all the nutrients a body needs is going to be far more slimming than 2000 cals of High fructose corn syrup.
The diet industry knows all this but if they acted on teh knowledge they wouldnt have an industry.

Mr_helpful

Program is on again tonight