Pffft... Figures.

Apparently I've been dieting since I was 10.

1) Go on diet by drastically cutting your caloric intake.

2) Lose x pounds

3) Now your diet is over, drastically increase your caloric intake until it's above your pre-diet intake.

4) Gain x + y pounds

// diets need to be sustainable

Obvious tag out having a snack?

Plenty of sex to work off that movie popcorn. And girls, swallowing won't make you fat.

lordargent: 1) Go on diet by drastically cutting your caloric intake.

2) Lose x pounds

3) Now your diet is over, drastically increase your caloric intake until it's above your pre-diet intake.

4) Gain x + y pounds

// diets need to be sustainable

This is what happened to me. I gained about 30 pounds after my last diet attempt. Never again.

As someone who lost 65 pounds and kept it off, I'll tell you the "secret". Move more, eat less crap. Ta-dah! That's it. Stop eating chips. Stop eating ice cream. Stop drinking beer. You want to eat those things? Then exercise a hell of a lot more than you do.

On that note: walking a mile or two isn't exercising. That's what your body should be doing every day, even more so, to burn what you already take in. Underestimate the calories you're burning. My dumb-as-a-stump sister in law thought 10 minutes on the treadmill burned 500 calories. Running 3 miles in 30 minutes barely does that. And as you get good at it, your body becomes more efficient and burns less. So shake things up and do different exercises. Lift weights because building muscle and maintaining proper muscle tone burns calories all day. Having more of your body weight come from fat does not.

Mildot: Plenty of sex to work off that movie popcorn. And girls, swallowing won't make you fat.

Yes.

Remember: Sex works all of the most important muscle groups.

Actually, there's a pretty big body of literature on this and the studies the Mail is probably referencing are primarily talking about fad/starvation diets. Actual dietary control plans (like, say, Weight Watchers, which they somewhat ironically mention on the first page) do not rely on self-control or periodic fasting/activity and instead apply an external control to your diet (you have a certain number of points to spend and a strict set of rules on how you spend them, and you stick to that whether you're hungry or not), and tend to be set by very denotative and well-accepted weight guidelines (things like BMI rather than "when you look good in a bikini" or some other trash). Actual diets work quite well, it's just "one simple rule" fad bullshiat that turns out to be somewhere between useless and dangerous.

Also, it's a bit funny to read a news item that treats "when you lose weight, you become hungry" as if it was the actual central point of any scientific paper. We established that rather a long while back, lads.

JonBuck: This is what happened to me. I gained about 30 pounds after my last diet attempt. Never again.

One of the big problems is that people spend years to gradually put on pounds, then expect to get rid of it all in just a few weeks.

So they go on whatever the popular diet du jour is, and lose weight. But those diets are not sustainable over the long term.

Jim_Callahan: Actually, there's a pretty big body of literature on this and the studies the Mail is probably referencing are primarily talking about fad/starvation diets. Actual dietary control plans (like, say, Weight Watchers,

Their point system is just abstracted calorie counting. The only benefit of them is that they package up pre-made meals that fit that system (which helps the people that don't have the willpower or time to do that themselves).

Any diet that says 'cut x out of your system' is already in the wrong IMO. Cutting caloric intake has to go across the board and restricting any particular item is a recipe for failure.

IMO, don't give up the foods you love, but eat them in moderation.

EX, say someone normally eats 6 Oreo cookies in one sitting (Oreo cookies are ~53 calories each, a snack pack contains six cookies)

If they could restrict themselves to 3 cookies, they just cut 159 calories out of their diet.

Heck, even cutting down to just 4 cookies drops 106 calories. If their diet was at equilibrium before, then that 106 calorie drop would create a deficit, and they could lose about a pound a month (this will gradually go down though as the less you weigh, the less your basal rate).

If you starve yourself, your body will attempt to correct your confusing, self-destructive behavior by hoarding all the resources it can and tripping the alarm that screams "WARNING: YOU NEED FOOD" all the time. That means decreased metabolism, increased tendency to store fat, and food and eating becoming an obsession. It's not dieting in general that does it, but dieting in such a way that your body thinks you might die and reacts accordingly. Naturally the article runs bleating into scaremongering "You'll always be fat! Dieting is dangerous, period!" territory, but considering the source that's not exactly a surprise. This is the kind of BS that induces panic attacks in people with eating disorders.

Like lordargent said, diets need to be sustainable. The problem for most people is making permanent lifestyle changes, because it's tempting to think that there's a quick fix and then you can go back to eating whatever you like. The reality is more work, but also more rewarding: you have to retrain your body and brain to like things that are good for you. You are what you eat, in the sense that you crave what you eat the most: if you eat sugar and fat and empty calories a lot, you will crave sugar and fat and empty calories. If you eat mostly fruit, vegetables, and lean protein, you'll find that those things are actually very good, once you get past your body whining at you for more junk. The same holds true for exercise: do it enough, and you'll start to like it, or at least, your body will get used to it and feel good when you do it.

Junk is everywhere, and as a whole we've been trained to think that having it every day is normal. Many people have dessert every day, or snacks that don't have any nutritional value. It's everywhere. If you came from another planet and looked at the average human grocery store, you might conclude that processed junk food is actually what humans are supposed to live on. There's a lot of disdain for "rabbit food" and life without regular sugar and junk food intake is often viewed as joyless. If you think that, there's a good chance that you're addicted to both and would be much better off cutting them out until you can re-add them back into your diet in small, infrequent amounts without binging on them.

Breaking habits is hard. A lot of people never manage it. Knowing the source of the problem helps.

lordargent:
Any diet that says 'cut x out of your system' is already in the wrong IMO. Cutting caloric intake has to go across the board and restricting any particular item is a recipe for failure.

IMO, don't give up the foods you love, but eat them in moderation.

EX, say someone normally eats 6 Oreo cookies in one sitting (Oreo cookies are ~53 calories each, a snack pack contains six cookies)

If they could restrict themselves to 3 cookies, they just cut 159 calories out of their diet.

A lot of people can't restrict themselves at first, unfortunately. They'll find ways to justify having the other three cookies ("Well, I'll make up for it tomorrow"). I've never been obese, but I've been terribly unhealthy and had intense sugar cravings, and I basically couldn't have any kind of dessert in the house without eating as much of it as I could. If it was there, the craving for it would prey on my mind until I ate it, and the weird part was that I didn't even really enjoy or taste it much, because it wasn't about the taste, but the brief mood lift when I ate it. I really did have to cut desserts and the like out entirely for a while to see any kind of success in eating healthier, so that I could get used to having just a little bit and enjoying it for its own sake.

lordargent: 1) Go on diet by drastically cutting your caloric intake.

2) Lose x pounds

3) Now your diet is over, drastically increase your caloric intake until it's above your pre-diet intake.

4) Gain x + y pounds

// diets need to be sustainable

It may not be that simple. You lose weight and the body physiologically tries to make you fatter by secreting more hormones to store fat and make you hungrier.

lordargent: IMO, don't give up the foods you love, but eat them in moderation.

EX, say someone normally eats 6 Oreo cookies in one sitting (Oreo cookies are ~53 calories each, a snack pack contains six cookies)

If they could restrict themselves to 3 cookies, they just cut 159 calories out of their diet.

Heck, even cutting down to just 4 cookies drops 106 calories. If their diet was at equilibrium before, then that 106 calorie drop would create a deficit, and they could lose about a pound a month (this will gradually go down though as the less you weigh, the less your basal rate).

Others would disagree with you. Many suggest abstaining from all refined carbs.

Oreo is full of refined carbs which once ingested spikes blood sugar very quickly. This then spikes insulin which then crashes blood sugar and you get hungry and your body gets sluggish.

There's also the psychological issue that makes a lot of people not actually lose weight when dieting - I have been virtuous (and hungry) all week long, therefore now I deserve caek!

Watch out for what crazy exercise will do to your appetite. Last year I went to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro. When I got back, I had lost 15 lbs. The body fat scale insisted that 12 lbs of that were fat but that made absolutely no sense even with hiking all day and having a weak appetite while on the mountain. But for the next month or so, man was my appetite ever in overdrive. I think my body panicked and thought hiking in the mountain for eight or more hours a day was something it needed adjust my calorie intake for. That didn't work so well when I instead spent eight hours a day sitting behind a desk. Gained back everything that I lost (at least half of which must have been water weight... high altitudes make you piss like a horse) and then some.

N7: If you starve yourself, your body will attempt to correct your confusing, self-destructive behavior by hoarding all the resources it can and tripping the alarm that screams "WARNING: YOU NEED FOOD" all the time. That means decreased metabolism, increased tendency to store fat, and food and eating becoming an obsession. It's not dieting in general that does it, but dieting in such a way that your body thinks you might die and reacts accordingly. Naturally the article runs bleating into scaremongering "You'll always be fat! Dieting is dangerous, period!" territory, but considering the source that's not exactly a surprise. This is the kind of BS that induces panic attacks in people with eating disorders.

Like lordargent said, diets need to be sustainable. The problem for most people is making permanent lifestyle changes, because it's tempting to think that there's a quick fix and then you can go back to eating whatever you like. The reality is more work, but also more rewarding: you have to retrain your body and brain to like things that are good for you. You are what you eat, in the sense that you crave what you eat the most: if you eat sugar and fat and empty calories a lot, you will crave sugar and fat and empty calories. If you eat mostly fruit, vegetables, and lean protein, you'll find that those things are actually very good, once you get past your body whining at you for more junk. The same holds true for exercise: do it enough, and you'll start to like it, or at least, your body will get used to it and feel good when you do it.

Junk is everywhere, and as a whole we've been trained to think that having it every day is normal. Many people have dessert every day, or snacks that don't have any nutritional value. It's everywhere. If you came from another planet and looked at the average human grocery store, you might conclude that processed junk food is actually what humans are supposed to live on. There's a lot of disdain for "rabbit food" and life ...

Why do people give attributes to the human body like it thinks it's going to die and such? If you're fat, the body then should be able to look at the fat stores and say, "chill, I'm not dying because I have enough stores to last months." Animals that hibernate like squirrels and bears will not eat during the hibernation period even if you put food in front of them.

My point is that don't believe what you read on the internets about the human body. Maybe it's some dude pimping his exercise video that came up with that little piece of nugget or maybe it's some scientist who threw it in to get a grant. It might be bullshiat and it might not be.

On a similar vein, some scientists believe that our body possesses the necessary mechanisms to control weight - i.e., you will be able to unconsciously control your weight either by losing your appetite or increasing your fidgeting and exercise activity. There are people in the world who will not gain weight even if you force feed them. For the others due to genetic variability, we don't have the mechanism to deal with modern refined foods that whacks out the control mechanisms that leads to weight gain.

EngineerAU: Watch out for what crazy exercise will do to your appetite. Last year I went to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro. When I got back, I had lost 15 lbs. The body fat scale insisted that 12 lbs of that were fat but that made absolutely no sense even with hiking all day and having a weak appetite while on the mountain. But for the next month or so, man was my appetite ever in overdrive. I think my body panicked and thought hiking in the mountain for eight or more hours a day was something it needed adjust my calorie intake for. That didn't work so well when I instead spent eight hours a day sitting behind a desk. Gained back everything that I lost (at least half of which must have been water weight... high altitudes make you piss like a horse) and then some.

The body fat scales aren't accurate (well the ones that send the pulses through your feet). Lots of them cheat and give you answers heavily based on your weight/height.

Just by eating salt you can gain 5-10lbs in a day because the body retains water to keep the electrolytes in balance.

Quit reading fark and get some exercise.

mr0x: Why do people give attributes to the human body like it thinks it's going to die and such?

Poetic license? Let me try this: your body is responding to a perceived food shortage by retaining fat. We don't hibernate, either, so when we stop eating enough, our body chemistry just kind of assumes that it must be because there's not enough food. It's not like I got this information from CrazyFadDiets.com, either, and I'm not sure what point you're trying to make; yes, there's variation according to individual physiology, but "Don't starve yourself, it has negative effects on the body and actually works against healthy weight loss" is both common sense and fairly common knowledge. I can also almost 100% guarantee you that eating more whole foods and less junk will have significant, measurable long-term effects over losing one's appetite (which is farking crazy) or, uh, fidgeting more. It's true that we aren't really built to survive on refined foods--which is what I said. It's not exactly rocket science, but with refined foods being so readily available, easy to eat, and part of our culture, it's hard for people to make what for a lot of them is a drastic change.

you all sound fat

How the fark do people gain so much weigth on holiday? I can't see enjoying myself on any vacation where I primarily sat around.


mr0x: It may not be that simple. You lose weight and the body physiologically tries to make you fatter by secreting more hormones to store fat and make you hungrier

I don't think that happens with a gradual healthy diet.

As someone who is on WeightWatchers, if the woman in the article lost 84 pounds in six months, she was doing it wrong. WeightWatchers discourages losing weight faster than two pounds per week, precisely for the reasons she was complaining about: losing weight at that rate does take longer, but will not leave you feeling weak or dizzy or unduly deprived. It's kind of a pain going slowly, but it is better for you in the long run.

liam76: mr0x: It may not be that simple. You lose weight and the body physiologically tries to make you fatter by secreting more hormones to store fat and make you hungrier

I don't think that happens with a gradual healthy diet.

Ding ding ding. Plus, you body quickly adapts to your level of exercise. If you're exercising - seriously exercising, not "I get on a treadmill occasionally," your body will recognize that and will not want to carry around extra fat. If you're sitting on your ass all day, your body will want to store more fat, and may even prioritize it over muscle. A good fullbody weightlifting routine really helps in explaining to your body that muscle is good, fat is bad.

Diets are stupid by today's accepted definition, because very few people see them as permanent. If you've managed to maintain your 250lb weight for a decade, what do you think is going to happen when you resume eating normally after dropping to 180 from a two-month crash diet?
The problem isn't diets in general; it's people seeing them as a few weeks of hell, rather than a gradual, permanent change.

I'll start eating vegetables when scientists find a way to make them not taste like bitter, juicy cardboard.

mr0x: It may not be that simple. You lose weight and the body physiologically tries to make you fatter by secreting more hormones to store fat and make you hungrier.

This mostly only happens to people who do really dumb stuff, like try to go on a 700 calorie a day diet for two weeks to look good for their vacation at the beach. Eating at a 300-500 calorie a day deficit to lose half a pound or a pound a week isn't going to make your body think it's starving, and for people who can do it by replacing french fries and Coke with something high in protein that's slower to digest it might not even make you hungry. It won't help you drop 20 pounds in two weeks after which you can quit, though, which is what most people who go on diets really want.

Get off your lazy ass and move around.

For all of evolution and most of human history we've had to spend almost all our waking time looking for food, hunting it down, and preparing it.

We aren't made to eat cheeseburgers and sit around at work on computers, and at home on computers, and in cars. Letting our muscles degrade to the point where they can barely shift their own weight.

Chop off your legs.

Only far people have to diet. Chew on that for a minute, subby.

Far = fat

Cake, chocolate, cookies, and candy. Every week, someone at work brings a bunch of it to the office as an excuse to "just eat one piece" and offload the rest. And naturally, as soon as they hear about other people bringing this shiat in, they make a beeline for it. Derp

lordargent: Their point system is just abstracted calorie counting.

Plus some rules relating to vegetable/fruit servings, but yes. It's about as close to actual direct diet control without hiring a chef and only eating what they make you, which is a bit more expensive than in the range of people for whom controlling their weight is a major obstacle.

Calorie-counting in one form or another is one way to tell that a given diet plan is at least halfway legit, since that's one of the main factors in weight gain especially. An alternate method to get a decent plan is to take a gym membership, trainers will usually tell you how much you should be eating given a certain amount of exercise. And they'll know not to do dumb shiat like fasting.

I have lost about 20 pounds since March 1. I'm using an app that determined what my daily caloric intake should be based on my height, gender, starting weight, goal weight, and time frame. I track everything I eat, which isn't difficult at all, thanks to the app. It has gotten me into the habit of thinking about what I eat, instead of just mindlessly shoving food into my mouth all day.

Well, I never lost a large amount of weight, so I don't know if my weighing in here will carry much weight with anyone.

I can say definitively, however, that I you are much more likely to be successful losing weight if you find a physical activity you enjoy doing. It started out as cycling for me. I got into mountain biking in high school. Then I wanted to be fast enough to keep up with my buddies. Then I wanted to be fast enough to win races. Then strong enough to pedal all day if I wanted. I got into backcountry skiing and a similar chain of events unfolded.

Hell, I started playing raquetball in college, and got my roommate down from 230 to 180 because he was so determined to beat me more often. And he continued to eat shiatty quality dining hall food.

If you can find an activity like that, first consider yourself lucky you don't have to look at exercise as a chore, and second just stay with it and/or continue branching out.

Also if you have space, plant a vegetable garden. It requires a good amount of work and most veggies have less caloric density and very high nutrient content.

My doctor told me I lost over ten pounds last month. What did I do differently? I ate breakfast almost every day.

And if you maybe return to a maintanence diet once in a while for brief periods, those leptin levels, etc even back out.

This is just dumb science to sell pharmaceutics to lazy people that want to believe that genetics is conspiring against them.

Cybernetic: I have lost about 20 pounds since March 1. I'm using an app that determined what my daily caloric intake should be based on my height, gender, starting weight, goal weight, and time frame. I track everything I eat, which isn't difficult at all, thanks to the app. It has gotten me into the habit of thinking about what I eat, instead of just mindlessly shoving food into my mouth all day.

What's the app?

You mean the feeding tube diet might not be healthy?

chestylarue747: My doctor told me I lost over ten pounds last month. What did I do differently? I ate breakfast almost every day.

Four doughnuts a day to a thinner waist.

Once you go over a certain weight threshold you should be required to keep packing on massive weight, at gunpoint if need be.

Healthy diet and exercise should be an everyday event. What is amusing about people that are always 'dieting' is the emotional and psychological attachments they have to it. Guilt for eating cake? Why? Rewarding yourself for starving by binging, etc.

N7: Poetic license? Let me try this: your body is responding to a perceived food shortage by retaining fat. We don't hibernate, either, so when we stop eating enough, our body chemistry just kind of assumes that it must be because there's not enough food. It's not like I got this information from CrazyFadDiets.com, either, and I'm not sure what point you're trying to make; yes, there's variation according to individual physiology, but "Don't starve yourself, it has negative effects on the body and actually works against healthy weight loss" is both common sense and fairly common knowledge. I can also almost 100% guarantee you that eating more whole foods and less junk will have significant, measurable long-term effects over losing one's appetite (which is farking crazy) or, uh, fidgeting more. It's true that we aren't really built to survive on refined foods--which is what I said. It's not exactly rocket science, but with refined foods being so readily available, easy to eat, and part of our culture, it's hard for people to make what for a lot of them is a drastic change.

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying we're given so much advice on so and so with so and so reasoning that it's hard to tell what is true and what is stuff someone came up with.

A lot of common knowledge has been wrong and a lot of common knowledge is a product of advertisers.

Someone wrote a big-ass page on this topic so you can read it for arguments contrary to your belief.
http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-debunked.html

N7: The problem for most people is making permanent healthy lifestyle changes, because it's tempting to think that there's a quick fix and then you can go back to eating whatever you like. The reality is more work, but also more rewarding: you have to retrain your body and brain to like things that are good for you. You are what you eat, in the sense that you crave what you eat the most: if you eat sugar and fat and empty calories a lot, you will crave sugar and fat and empty calories. If you eat mostly fruit, vegetables, and lean protein, you'll find that those things are actually very good, once you get past your body whining at you for more junk.

FTFY, but so much this. After an extremely stressful time in my life, it was easy for me to get into a routine of fast food, driving instead of biking, not sleeping enough, and not getting any additional exercise.

A couple months ago, my twin brother informed me that we're climbing a 14er and that I will never live it down if I don't make this climb, so I've been trying to make those healthy lifestyle changes. It's hard. I love crap food. But, now I take my first break at work getting produce from the grocery store, and my second break working out. It still feels like it sucks.

www.reddit.com/r/keto.

Carbs make you fat.

Workout, eat less

It's not rocket science, but apparently making a bra is... on the side "Most comfortable push up bra yet promises comfort and style"