Have you ever been on a diet?
 

I'm fighting with my pounds every day and one thing is sure : It's not easy at all ! |banghead| |cry|

I need to get rid of these extra pounds because they are realy affecting my health ! |angry|

Have you ever tried to loose weight? Did it worked for you ?

Sure, I lost 25 pounds in seven weeks on the Atkins diet. I never felt hungry, never felt I was doing without. (Any diet that lets me eat all the bacon, sausage, meats and veggies I want is alright by me) I cut my carbs down to around 40-50/day, less than he suggests. I cut out what I've always called "starchy" foods - potatoes, rice, pasta, bread, etc. I also started walking around the neighborhood and doing situps and simple exercises when I got home. Once you get near your target wieght, start adding carbs back in. Can't live on a low carb diet forever. Worked for me.

I did The Fat Smash Diet (you can find it on Amazon for $10 or so) and it worked wonders until I stopped doing it :D

Seriously, it's horrible for the 1st 2 or 3 days, but I lost 15-20 lbs during the 2 months I was on it.

I didn't heared about that one before |huh I think I'll give it a try :D

I used to diet, and I came to the conclusion that there is only one diet that really works, and it is:

Eat the things you normally eat, but eat smaller portions.

Anything else is too much hard work and too hard to stick to.

(Although if you eat a lot of things with sugar in them try to cut those out. Sugar is not very fattening, but in a healthy human it causes a sudden rise in blood sugar levels, followed by a sudden drop in it when your body removes the sugar from your blood. Unfortunately your brain interprets this drop in blood sugar as a need for food so makes you feel hungry. So sugary foods make it very hard to stick to the "eat smaller portions" ideal, or any other diet you try. And do note that because sugar does not have a lot of calories in it, you will find it in many diet foods too.)

Oh, and exercising more at the same time helps as well.

Back in the early 90s I got way out of line with weight. I was in college and boozing every day and eating pure garbage. My weight got up to 264 pounds, which was rather unflattering on my 5'9 inch frame.

I bought a home gym and decided to start working out. I found an article in a muscle magazine that answered a reader question on how to add muscle but take off fat, written by some big black guy that was multi time winner of the bodybuilding championships. He replied to cut fat, carbs, sugars, dairy, eggs, etc(all the good stuff) to decent levels and exercise regularly.

I couldn't follow his guidelines, so I made my own. First I totally quit drinking. If recommended fat intake was 30 grams a day to lose weight, I cut it to 10 and stuck with it. I started eating tons of rice and veggies and counted every fat gram.
A can of tuna and a can of english peas with a slice or 2 of bread might be the days allowance of fat.(veggies are virtually fat free, with the exception of corn, so 5 cans of veggies was free eats) It was grueling for sure. In just over 4 months, I dropped from 264 to a skeletal 132.

I was so skinny I looked like if I lost 2 more pounds that I'd fall through my ass and hang myself.

No telling how much I damaged my body, but once I started eating regular again,my body reached it's happy medium and I gained back to about 175 and stayed there. Now, about 15 years later, I can eat all I want, when I want, and fluctuate between 175 and 190.

Being as everybody's body works differently, I personally think your best bet is to try various things, giving them time to work or fail, but not lingering on them too long, and find what works best for you and your lifestyle

Oh and the really bad news on that sugar thing is the way that your body neutralises alcohol in your blood is by converting it to sugar. So you got to treat alcohol as sugar too (including low sugar/low carb alcohol - it is kind of pointless making an alcoholic drink low in sugar when the alcohol is going to be converted into sugar in your bloodstream).

Sex is a good exercise...

|couch|

Yeah it is. When I was first diagnosed diabetic and the nurse told me that I should take more exercise, I pointed this out, and the fact that I had neither a wife or girlfriend. Then I asked if the NHS (the state healthcare in Britain) could supply me with prostitutes.

Unfortunately she did not have a sense of humour.

It really is a common sense diet - the 1st 9 days are basically fruit & vegetables, brown rice, some oatmeal, yogurt & fruit juice. The worst part of it for me was no caffeine :(

After that, you can eat some meat (chicken, fish, etc) & a couple of other things (like 1 cup of coffee)

But it did work |thumb

Now that I could not cope with, I am seriously addicted to the stuff. But I am curious, caffeine is fat, sugar, and calorie free, so how does giving it up help you loose weight?

If you have issues with sugar, like I do, caffeine can cause your sugar to yo-yo more than normal. I gave up caffeine about 3 months ago and WOW do I speed if I have any, lol.

I tried atkins diet for awhile, lost weight. then I went through CEA-HOW (compulsive eaters anonymous) which is a 12 step program and their diet is fanatic. I lost the weight, but you are basically eating about 1,000 calories a day. I was always hungry. No flour. No sugar. you weigh and measure everything. Very fat restricted.

When I went off that, I slowly gained up to about 10# over what I am now. Tried atkins again, my cholesterol went up to almost 300. So now I'm back to vegetarian and my cholesterol is the lowest its been in my life.

I'm finding out I have to cut out all high carb / sugar junk foods or my sugar goes too high. Even things like too much brown rice can do it. It is tough to lose the weight now, since if I eat too many carbs, I pour insulin into my system, that makes your body super efficient at fat storing, and I'll gain back the last 5# I lost.|angry|

So my diet today is a long-range style of eating that you can find in the book / website ultrametabolism.com by Dr. Mark Hyman. I am working on exercising more too. If I stick with that, I lose weight, and I don't feel deprived at all. It is a "whole foods" diet, eating foods in natural or as close to natural form as you can.

JackDaniels, you might want to pick up a cheap blood gloucose test kit. Eat something that has sugar / carbs, check your sugar 1/2 hr, 1 hr after and se where it goes. If too high (over 200 is diabetic, over about 170 is pre) then know you can't eat that. It helps finding the foods that is triggering that and avoiding them, so you don't keep producing excess insulin and turning your body into a fat storing machine.

If you do this pick up one that directly measures your blood (i.e. one you have to give a drip of blood to). The results from ones that test your urine are only slightly better than an educated guess.

Diets are for fat people. :D They are also mostly bullshit. Gimmicks, crap theories, and money-making schemes. It took you all your life to gain that weight, so don't be in a hurry to lose it all. Truly, if you want to lose weight and maintain your new heroine addicted Olsen twin-like figure, you should not make drastic changes to your lifestyle. The diet plans which force you to completely modify your habits and food choices almost always fail.

The key to successfully losing weight in a healthy and natural manner, and keeping that excess tonage off, is to continue eating what you would normally eat - just less of it. Would it be far healthier for us to eat other, better foods? Sure, but is it realistic? Fuck no.

Drink a glass of water before dinner. Then, simply give yourself slightly smaller portions. Only moderately smaller portions at first. Ease in to it. When you have completed that bucket full, and you are sitting there thinking that you are still hungry, there are two things you must consider: 1 - you are NOT really hungry. We aren't intended to consume huge amounts of food in a single sitting. That feeling of hunger is there because you are accustomed to a different level of satisfaction. You are NOT hungry. 2 - You WILL eat again later. It's far healthier to eat smaller amounts throughout the day than it is to eat larger amounts only 3 times per day. You are a webmaster. I know you're snacking all day anyway. (Changing what you tend to snack on is an excellent choice. I find those small carrots a great treat and the loud crunching makes me feel like I'm eating something sturdy and fattening. If I have no carrots, I'll eat cheap store-brand frosted oatmeal cookies. :D)

Accustoming yourself to smaller portions is simple and happens much faster than you'd think. Within 2-3 days you'll find that you experience a little pride in your ability to easily serve yourself moderate amounts of food. There will be dishes which you have always loved and it doesn't hurt to treat yourself to a little more of those. Just keep in mind, you are treating yourself - not going back to stuffing your gut at every meal.

Don't weigh yourself every day. True and lasting progress takes time. Rome wasn't built, r*ped, and pillaged in a single day.

Get off your fat ass once in a while. You don't need a gym membership or a $400 exer-cycle (like the one gathering dust behind me). Take a short walk a couple of times per week. Don't look for the closest parking spot at the mall. Read the board and pace back and forth in some kind of semi-psychotic loop of anger, frustration, and paranoia. That's my exercise regimen.

This moderate change should work for most people. There are those who use food as a twisted sort of self-medication due to being gangbanged by a tribe of aboriginal woodsman as a child or what-not. Diets don't work for those people. They should seek psychological treatment for such duressing issues.

I have a bigger sugar problem if I give up caffeine. After about 48 hours without it I am so depressed and pissed off that I don't care about anything, even my health. So I end up eating candy bars like I am trying to kill myself.

Shut up you bastard, one of my 'non adult' businesses is selling diet eBooks, the last I need is you telling people the truth!

I've tried many diets over the years and have come to the understanding that "diets" are quick fixes. Though they may work temporarily, they do not address the underlying problem which is a poor lifestyle.

If you're fat and out of shape it's because you eat too much and excercise too little. Some diets, like the Atkins diet and any other that advocates cutting carbs dramatically while allowing for large amounts of bad fats (bacon, cheese etc.) are potentially dangerous.

The only "diet" that works long term is a change in lifestyle. Eat healthy, balanced and in moderation, excercise regularly and stick with it.

UW you should become a counselor ! :D

You have convinced me :)

I think what UW said should work for anyone who wants to loose weight

LOL. I had to cut down to 1 cup a day, and do that for about a month, then stop. I truthfully haven't had any side effect of not drinking it this time, other than a little tiredness which I found was low vit B levels from being a vegetarian. Once I started taking extra B, that went away. :D

The good thing after quitting is I don't get as many mood swings, and I don't get my heart feeling like it is going to jump out of my chest anymore.

I agree alot with UW. One of the reasons I do that ultrametabolism. It isn't a diet, just a way of eating healthier. I've done diets, and they may work in the short run, but not in a long haul.

My dr. keeps telling me it is a matter of more exercise and watching what you eat. As you get older, it gets harder, because your metabolism slows down.

The only reason I joined Curves (a gym for women) is because it gets me out of the house for an hour, and motivates me because of the success stories I'm surrounded by. Also all the machines are built smaller scale for women.

Unless it is pouring rain, I always park about as far away from the entrance to stores as I can get and still be in the parking lot. And try to walk some and ride my bike a bit each week. Every little bit of extra movement helps.

I like what you said on portions UW that is my problem, I like a LOT of food. So I try to bulk up with a LOT of salad greens. Makes it look like I'm eating a lot yet it is only about 30 calories.

And bagged sweet peas or chinese peas are good snacks too, very crunchy.

You are so lucky, I have twice tried to give up, and twice stayed a few days with someone who doesn't believe in caffeine, so won't serve drinks containing it. About 24 hours after going without I get a migraine to end all migraines, and a further 24 hours after that I get depressed, ratty, argumentative, and become a complete uncaring bastard. On the only occasion I did not 'giving up at giving up' at that point I eventually ended up sitting on the floor in the corner crying because the shirt I had just tried to iron was dirty, no one could console me and I genuinely believed that the shirt being dirty was the worst possible thing to ever have happened to anyone in the world.

Since then, for my own health, and for the good of mankind, I have never tried to give up (and when I stay with anyone I always pack a jar of instant coffee in my wash bag just in case).

In my own defence; Robert Downey Jr used to be an alcoholic and a junky. He has since 'gone clean' but in an interview said that giving up coffee was much harder than giving up alcohol or hard drugs, and he described the side effects of giving up coffee as "loosing the will or any desire to live". Although he is now off coffee, he still drinks tea which has some caffeine in it.

Believe me, I've tried to give it up before, with the same results you described. It was horrible. But I went from drinking a pot (or 2) a day to zero. This time, I tapered off. I have an irregular heart beat that is aggravated by caffeine. So I started cutting down how much I drank a little at a time, until I was on 1 cup a day for a long time. That worked.

I have also found that, if I watch my sugar/carb intake, wow my mood swings dissapear. If I eat too much sugar more than 1x in a day, I'm horribly depressed. Might want to check if that isn't part of your problem.

Finally, there is a brain chemical abnomality I read about (wish I could remember) that some people addicted to caffeine are actually treating with caffeine. You might be one of those people, and might be why you can't withdraw off it.

I was always a bigger guy, even growing up as a kid I remember trying to lose weight as early as elementary school. In high school I eventually became steady at around 260-270 pounds. I played basketball all the time, and played organized baseball until I was 17. Since I was so active I wasnt overly huge but 270 pounds for a 6'1 guy is still a lot of extra poundage. Then when I quit playing sports I ballooned up like a fucking whale. I eventually got up to 335. I started playing in softball leagues 3 years ago but was still eating badly and just getting some exercise in I dropped down to 300. Part of it was frustration of not being able to play ball like I used to and the other part of it was I just got sick and tired of feeling like shit, so I decided I was gonna get serious about losing weight.

After trying too many different things to even remeber I kinda came up with my own diet, along with taking 75 mg of epederine first thing in the morning along with a pot of coffee. Yeah alot of people say ephederine and caffeine are bad for you, but I guess you gotta figure how fat you are (in my case I was becoming morbidly obese) and if losing weight is worth the epederine.

First thing when I wake up is take 75mg of ephederine (most say your only suppose to take 25mg at a time 3 times a day, but if I take any past noon I cannot sleep at all, I have ended up staying awake for 4 days straight before), along with 600 mg of caffeine pills, I have since replaced that with drinking a pot of coffee. Then the hardest part is I didnt eat a thing until around 5 or 6 o'clock in the evening. I ate whatever I wanted and quite a bit of it, just not Thanks Giving Dinner portions :) That one meal is all I ate all day long, so I made sure I satisfied my hunger. After about a year of sticking to that 90% of the time I was down to 205 pounds.

Yeah some people say epederine, caffeine, only eating once a day is bad for you, but I know of all the things I tried this is the only one I could get to work. My blood pressure which was thru the roof is fine now, (not sure about my cholestorol, but I dont worry about it because I dont eat a whole lot of meat). I feel awesome, I really feel like a whole new person and pretty much my whole life is completely different just from having 1000x the energy.

Now that I am in my happy weight area, seems like when I hit 203 my body screams feed me non stop. What I do to maintain is still take my ephederine and drink my coffee but I let myself eat twice a day now, usually around 1 or 2 pm, and eat again around 7 or 8 at night. I try not to eat too much but sometimes I do. If I catch myself getting over 212 I go back to the above until I get back down to the 205 area.

Probably not the best or healthiest method but that is exactly what I did and it worked for me.

I am diabetic so I monitor my blood sugar level carefully. But, yes, one of the early indications that my blood sugar level has got too high is that I get ratty and unpleasant to be around.

UW your advice was great |thumb

Drinking lot's of water and walking my dog for 30 minutes a day has kept me at the size I like to be.

And don't eat anything after 8pm at night! |thumb

Good advice provided it is tap water. Water helps you keep healthy, loose weight, and not feel hungry. But some of the minerals in bottled water tend to lead to your body retaining the water, which makes you look fat. Tap water does not usually have these minerals (the regulations in both the US and UK are much stricter on what can be in tap water than they are on bottled water).

Eating at night and drinking gallons of milk with every meal made me fat. I stopped eating at night and at first I had a hard time sleeping because of the taste of a days worth of cigarettes in my mouth, so I started gargling with mouthwash before bed and slept well. I quit milk for everything except cereal and drank gallons of water instead. I also completely cut out anything that was fried and limited myself to pizza once a month. I stopped drinking bourbon and rum and cut back to 6-8 beers a day.

Just doing that I lost 128 pounds over about 3 years and dropped to 160 pounds. I'm now up to 195 again because I've started eating before bed. I'll cut that out and drop to 175 by summer, which is about what I should weigh.

I'm fortunate enough to have a rabid metabolism so I never had to go on a diet, but I do have a dear friend who is a very responsible MD (a nutritionist of course) and, while talking the other day, he explained to me that, when it comes to diet, it is very important not to overdo it.
One must not try to lose more than 1kg (2.2pounds) a month because your brain adapts to your weight (whatever that weight may be) and will fight to get you back to it because it intersprets drastic weightloss as a negative condition, so 2.2pounds a month seems to be the acceptable loss for your brain to go along with it.
Another thing that he mentioned was that way too many people go the do-it-yourself way and that's not a good thing. Spend a couple of bucks and consult with a nutritionist (an MD of course). I also have a dearest friend who is a on a wheelchair and she has done this and had some very good results with the help of a good nutritionist: weight down, energy levels up, overall parameters in the norm.
Other than that, being an Italian I would point you in the direction of the Mediterranean diet which is widely acknowledged as the most balanced and more satisfying of diets.
Good luck with it! |thumb

I had a starting weight of 265. Stayed at that weight a couple years til i decidided to get back in shape. I started eating 6 times a day and exercising.

Like most things, after 2 weeks it becomes habit and much easier to stick with.

6 meals a day with a 40/40/20 split. protein/carbs/fat.

Eat about 3 hours apart and have a meal directly after exercise.

20 minutes of high interval aerobic activity 3 times a week.

45 minutes of compound movement weightlifting 3 days per week (alternating upper and lower every other day).

Simple as that. Eating more frequent meals, drinking tons more water and exercising.

I gained muscle (lifted weights for 1 month solid before changing diet and reducing calories) and lost fat over 5 months or so. try to either lose fat or gain muscle, dont try to do both at the same time. I went from 265 and probably 35% bf with no muscle to 215 at 11% with a decent amount of muscle.

I'm about to do it again and maintain it as my weights been rising again, i just like fast food too much :)

I followed a diet very similar to the body for life book, i'd recommend it.

oldbrad - that sounds very similar to the one that Ive been using - that definitely works - it is not a diet - it is a lifestyle change
Tom Venuto has a great program and his website is http://www.burnthefat.com/
He really does dispel every myth in diets/low carb BS/supplements and does it scientifically - and I havent been hungry once - 6 meals a day (5 for women) lots of tap water, and good sensible exercise - and yes you can even have caffiene(coffee) - and it works extremely well. I paid for the entire book I was so impressed and he has a complete support forum with loads more info/recipes/science as well as just plain motivational crap that you may or may not need
Other than this stuff I picked up in Vegas(no not the money LOL) Ive been sticking to it with no effort other than some small changes in my schedule that are well worth it - cause even with my heart in the shape its in I can do this and that makes it fantastic for me

"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating,
and in fourteen days I had lost exactly two weeks." - Joe E. Lewis

-- and that's the best results I've had with diets too.

:)

i am dealing with diets since i was 15 , but there is only one thing what will help to loose you some weight........: eat 3 times a day (normally healthy food) and do some sports, and yep i am that person also who use those short time loosing alot of weight diets, but i have to agree: all you have to do is change your eating habbits and move your lazy butt, now even i am talking that wise about it, i have some weigth problems everytime too, why? because i am to lazy to do sports or moving my butt and i like bad food and eat when i want to:D

That is extremely encouraging :D

Low carb/Atkins is awesome. I ate an amazing ribeye steak this morning and slathered it in butter. Yum! All the studies have shown that fat is not harmful unless you eat it in combination with a bunch of carbs. It's like a seesaw: you wanna eat a bunch of carbs, cut back on the fat. If you like fat, cut the carbs. But you have to pick one approach and stick with it, so it just becomes a matter of figuring out which you enjoy more. I'm going with bacon every time.

It worked. But it should be done unde doctor's control for sure after all necessary tests

i think it is much better to start exercising if you wanna lose weight

diets could be dangerous, and if you do some sport you will also improve your health and condition

don't be lazy and do not rely on diets - that's my advice to you

Folks, diet is death.|shocking| No, really. I was keeping to a diet one day. But it didn't help. I lost some weight. But then... I gain 10 pound more. |banghead|

Yeah, as Garfield once said "Diet is just 'die' with a 't' added."

|rasta| I agree