Can you make someone else lose weight?

fred246

It's all about diet and exercise but exercise doesn't burn as much calories as people hope. So someone eating 4000 calories a day would have to run a marathon every day just to maintain weight. So calorie control is essential. Armed with myfitnesspal and a set of digital scales you can work out calories eaten daily. Once the diet is under control you can then focus on the difference exercise makes. You have to burn more calories than are consumed for long periods to lose weight and it is VERY HARD to do that.

FBaby

I've just checked 25 of the meals I eat, (12 processed, 13 home cooked) and the home cooked ones are 43% more expensive on average

Yes, but cut either of the portions into two, freeze the rest, and suddenly you get double the meals.

It's been well advertised that portions have increased significantly. I'm horrified when I go to Toby Carvery and see the plates people eat and manage to finish without any trouble, and then go on to have desert. They could only put that much in their stomach if they are used to eating large portions. A carvery can be relatively healthy but a reasonable portion at 1,000 calories is very different to a massive one at 3,000 with dessert.

Add to this all those 'forgotten' snacks that people have but opt to forget about because of the psychological process of denial, including the glasses of wine and beer, and you have it.

It is very possible to be and remain slim without avoiding all bad food. What slim people do though is balance their diet. If they go out and indulge one day, they will have little the next couple of days. If they let go on holiday, they will come back and eat a stricter diet for two weeks when home.

Tabbytabitha

svain wrote: »

This is the problem ... The costs incurred for the obese is sinking the NHS and yet people still find excuses. Society is starting to frown upon the obese (thru eating) as they do/did on smokers and will become socially unacceptable in time. This change in itself will reduce the problem hopefully

jack_pott wrote: »

No it isn't. You can 'prove' anything if you cherry-pick one item to suit your argument.

I've just checked 25 of the meals I eat, (12 processed, 13 home cooked) and the home cooked ones are 43% more expensive on average.

Here's the same conclusion from Cambridge University, except that they found that the healthiest foodstuffs were even more expensive:

"The mean 2012 price/1000 kcal was £2.50 for less healthy items and £7.49 for more healthy items."

The idea that it's easy to eat healthily on a budget is just another of the many ways in which the poor are made to look lazy.

(My homemade cottage pie costs more than double the average for my diet as a whole.)

Well, I've just checked Tesco's site and their ready meals are £2.50 each (dearer for their Finest range). Even cooking for 1 person, it wouldn't cost me £2.50per portion to knock up a lasagne/shepherd's pie/ curry or a home made stew etc, with greater savings if cooking for a family. That's obviously based on cost alone but you'd cook those things more healthily if that was important to you.

shykins

dandy i see you say your husband likes mayo, cheese and creamy sauces etc, have you looked at lowcarbing? he would be able to eat those if he did.

Pollycat

jack_pott wrote: »

No it isn't. You can 'prove' anything if you cherry-pick one item to suit your argument.

I've just checked 25 of the meals I eat, (12 processed, 13 home cooked) and the home cooked ones are 43% more expensive on average.

Here's the same conclusion from Cambridge University, except that they found that the healthiest foodstuffs were even more expensive:

"The mean 2012 price/1000 kcal was £2.50 for less healthy items and £7.49 for more healthy items."

The idea that it's easy to eat healthily on a budget is just another of the many ways in which the poor are made to look lazy.

(My homemade cottage pie costs more than double the average for my diet as a whole.)

It depends how you 'home cook'.
If you buy a 250gm pack of mince and a small bag of potatoes to make a shepherd's pie, it will be more expensive per portion than buying a 1kg pack of mince and a big bag of potatoes and batch cooking.

Anoneemoose wrote: »

And forl each of those target members, there will be many more who didn't get to target or who got to target and then regained. Like the Woman of the Year who was on that Channel 4 documentary.

Many will believe in SW. I did once upon a time too, so I understand why it seems attractive. And it worked for me, many times. Until I became obsessed with syns and thinking if I happened to eat a wholesome full fat yogurt with nuts and honey that I would be 'bad' because it wasn't a processed mullerlight that was 'free'.

Losing weight is relatively easy, keeping it off is the difficult bit. And as I said, there are plenty of studies that show between 80/95% of people who diet, WILL regain the weight. It doesn't matter whether that's SW, WW or any of the other diet plans out there. And of those 80/95%, 2/3 will regain even more weight.

Not everyone will become obsessed.
You may say 'the majority' will but are there any stats to prove that?

I'd say it's worth the OP's OH trying SW (and from later posts it seems like they are both going to do it) because as it is right now, he's in a very dangerous place health-wise.

pollypenny

dandy-candy wrote: »

Gosh so many replies! Thank you.

DH went to a SW about 8 years ago but he didn't think it was a very good one as the 2 ladies running it were enormous and said you can drink as much diet soda a day as you want because it's calorie free, which he didn't think was very healthy advice. I've looked up on the SW site and found a different one and suggested he tries it, he said he will go if I come too which I'm fine with.

He also said he would start the diet again on Monday which I was really amazed and pleased about as I had assumed he would say "after Christmas". He doesn't have much of a sweet tooth but he loves fats - mayonnaise, cheese, creamy sauces, ice cream, slabs of butter etc. We have been eating rather a lot of ready meals lately so I'm going to completely stop getting those.

Why not google Michael Mosley and find his advice, then buy his book Intermittent Fasting, which gives the scientific basis for the plan.

Nothing is banned, but obviously a cream cake or pile of potatoes would use up the calorie allowance.

OH and I found it easy. After a couple of weeks we found that our appetite had reduced making things even more easy.

He’d tried SW too, but we don’t have much confidence in anyone who say potatoes are free foods!


Good luck.

Red-Squirrel_2

OP, if your husband wants to improve his health I think the best thing to do would be to go the GP and ask to be referred to a dietician if possible and for a prescribed gym membership if these are still available in your area.

Slimming clubs, fad diets etc. can definitely get some weight off in the short term but if he wants to be healthy long term and learn to look after himself they aren't really the answer.

If he doesn't want to, I don't think there is a lot you can do. People never make changes (whether that's diet, smoking. drinking, change of job, keeping their house clean, treating people better or anything else) if they don't actually truly want to themselves. You can only make him aware of your fears for losing him and hope that eventually makes him rethink.

Tabbytabitha

Pollycat wrote: »

It depends how you 'home cook'.
If you buy a 250gm pack of mince and a small bag of potatoes to make a shepherd's pie, it will be more expensive per portion than buying a 1kg pack of mince and a big bag of potatoes and batch cooking.

I don't really see that. The butcher doesn't charge less for larger amounts of mince and Tesco doesn't seem to either. Potatoes can be cheaper if you buy a large sack but they're so cheap any way the difference would be pennies.

Just going on Tesco prices, you could make 4 portions of shepherd's pie for only a little over the amount you'd pay for 1 ready portion and that would be with considerably more meat than the processed version would contain. People who eat less meat than I do would probably get 6 portions from the same amount.

Pollycat

Tabbytabitha wrote: »

I don't really see that. The butcher doesn't charge less for larger amounts of mince and Tesco doesn't seem to either. Potatoes can be cheaper if you buy a large sack but they're so cheap any way the difference would be pennies.

Just going on Tesco prices, you could make 4 portions of shepherd's pie for only a little over the amount you'd pay for 1 ready portion and that would be with considerably more meat than the processed version would contain. People who eat less meat than I do would probably get 6 portions from the same amount.

Yes, they do charge less for for larger amounts of mince.
500gms of lean steak mince (5% fat) £4.00 = £8.00 per kg
250gms of lean steak mince (5% fat) £2.50 = £10.00 per kg
https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/search?query=minced%20beef&icid=tescohp_sws-1_minced%20beef

Some butchers do cheaper deals for larger quantities, at least the ones in my area do.

Cheapest 2.5 kg bag of potatoes 54p per kg in Tesco.
Some people (from reading the various 'use by'/'best before' threads) wouldn't feel 'safe' buying a big bag of potatoes in case they don't use them up before the date so would pay more than that per kg for a smaller amount.

I agree with your second paragraph.

Anoneemoose

Pollycat wrote: »

It depends how you 'home cook'.
If you buy a 250gm pack of mince and a small bag of potatoes to make a shepherd's pie, it will be more expensive per portion than buying a 1kg pack of mince and a big bag of potatoes and batch cooking.


Not everyone will become obsessed.
You may say 'the majority' will but are there any stats to prove that?

I'd say it's worth the OP's OH trying SW (and from later posts it seems like they are both going to do it) because as it is right now, he's in a very dangerous place health-wise.

This is the most comprehensive, easy to read link I have found. I have previously had access to the full thing. This is a meta analysis of other studies. One of the most eye opening findings is that one of the biggest risk factors for obesity is having previously dieted.

http://www.dishlab.org/pubs/2013%20Compass.pdf

And this...

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/Dieting-Does-Not-Work-UCLA-Researchers-7832