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I have a friend who is over 20 stone but he's built like me with a small frame so he can't carry it. We've had a few conversations about his food intake which I have found quite disturbing, eg if he opens a packet of biscuits he has to eat the lot in one go. He is in and out of hospital all the time, has multiple health issues most of which are a result of his obesity and he's heading for a miserable early grave and none of us know what to do about it. Sadly he knows he is grossly overweight, he isn't in denial so it's how to find an incentive to change his lifestyle.
I went through this in my early 20's ie 40 years ago. My dad was a fat bloke even in the 1960's when everyone seemed to be thin, and I could see myself going the same way. I get "oh it's all right for you, you're naturally thin" thrown at me all the time. Not at all, it was hard work weaning myself off carbohydrates but the turning point for me was when a girl I fancied told me I was fat. I think guys who are well into middle age must find it harder to generate the enthusiasm for changing their eating habits. Modern day life doesn't help with sugar laden products and cheap fast food everywhere but in the end it is down to the individual.
I've decided no chocs, cake etc during Jan to see how it goes - have no crisps now anyway
No soups, spaghetti sauces mixes etc that are laden with sugar - Make your own sauce for pastas
Weetabix for breakfast with no sugar
Carrying a bit to much weight on my stomach - I'm only around 12 stone - but I must admit that changes above are having little impact on reducing waist line
The main thing that puts me off sugar is what it does to your teeth. Just don't get why anyone drinks full sugar soft drinks like Coke, Red Bull etc. Particularly the ones that have the "zero" options which IMO taste almost the same.
Full sugar fizz is so bad for you, in so many ways.
Sugar is hidden in so many things too. The food industry really needs to sort it out. For example, why do my salt and vinegar crisps have sugar in them?? Mind you, on the crisp front, I'd have salt n shake everytime. A spud should taste like a spud.
SUppose its what we have been steered to get used to over a number of years - over flavoured food that tastes of sugar and salt, rather than tasting of itself.
Western diet is too heavy in carbs (incl sugar), says the fat bastard who needs to sort himself out ....:(
Feedback
I could certainly eat less chocolate as like the OP I am partial to something sweet after a meal and usually reach for a choccy bar. I drink beer and I like rum+coke. Coke is a biggie and I have wanted to cut it out for ages but rum+coke is just so tasty! Would swapping my mixer to apple juice be much of an improvement?
I cook most of my meals from fresh so added sugars in food isn't a huge problem so for me I guess it's the Coke and the chocolate.
And the crisps. Always crisps.
Mmm, crisps.
They're also playing on things we developed as evolutionary advantages - when food was relatively scarce and required much more effort, anything high in sugar or fat was a rare bonus so they taste good to us - it's your brain's way of rewarding you for a successful hunt/scavenge.
I found that developing a routine (and thus good habits) was important to losing weight without minding it. So lots more walking, and my evening meals for a good few months were based around three handfuls of lightly cooked veg (generally broccoli, sugar snaps, and baby corn, though I varied this a fair bit), a protein/fat provider (lump of dead animal, basically, and I didn't care about fat) and some roasted squash or sweet potato or potato. With a dollop of pesto or similar on top.
Also I about halved my breakfast calories by switching to having a thin bagel with two rashers of grilled bacon and a bit of ketchup, instead of pastries or cereal or toast.
I had to go sugar-free after been diagnosed type 2 diabetes. I didn't have a sweet tooth so wasn't a problem, at first - but now being told I can't/shouldn't I'm tempted more than I ever was ... Giving it up in tea was the hardest but now even a couple of grains in tea tastes grim. The industrial quantities of JD & coke gave way to straight Bourbon no bother.
One effect was beginning to taste salt more strongly. And the overall effect was getting to taste the vast amount of salt & sugar in salt crammed into food, it makes so many things off-putting.
Except bacon. Bacon is food of the gods.
Now I want bacon, dammit.
was listening to R4 at lunchtime, think it must have been NYD and they were talking about losing weight via diet/exercise. I was feeling ready for a little munch, so while agreeing with them about the desirability of a healthy diet, I made myself a bacon sandwich
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
Fundamentally if you use more calories than you eat then you'll lose weight; if it's the other way around then you'll gain wait. Counting calories is therefore the most successful approach to losing weight - and partly because it means you can still have chocolate, cake, biscuits, and sugar in your coffee, as long as you balance that.
Most of the commercial diet plans (weightwatchers, slimming world etc) are calorie counting for you and making it into points or meal guides or similar, but it's not difficult to keep track of your intake yourself.
However, on the other hand, foods relatively dense in sugar and starches raise blood glucose --> which requires insulin to deal with it. And, all other things being equal insulin is a fat-storing hormone. Which is why the type of dietary changes @jonnyburgo and others on here have made are noticeably efficient for weight reduction. (Because they don't stimulate production of gallons of insulin, therefore you're not storing that glucose-that's-been-dealt-with-by-insulin portion of your diet as fat. <-- a bit 101 but that's my ultra-basic understanding)
The real fascination for me is the type of thinking and behaviour that @Neill described with his overweight friend. I read that and think, okay that's extreme but I'm like that a bit. How come I don't change my behaviour to what I know would be good for me? What's keeping people stuck?
Some great stories in this thread.
I'm trying to do a bit of a fat burn in January (although I only started on Tuesday).
I have decided to minimise carbs, especially sugar (read chocolate and ale), and concentrate on veg and protein, while maintaining my normal training.
I tried to bulk up last year and put on a stone between May and November. Most of it is muscle but it's impossible to avoid adding a bit of fat too. I'm weighing in at just over 12 stone at the moment, so I'm intrigued to see how much I can lose, and also if there is any visible difference.
I can't help about the shape I'm in, I can't sing I ain't pretty and my legs are thin
But don't ask me what I think of you, I might not give the answer that you want me to
The powerful US food industry lobbied hard during the 60s to make fat the bad boy in diets and for many years afterwards pumped the industrial food production with salt and sugar types. This fortunately coincided with the development by a Japanese scientist with the ability to make fructose/syrup/sugar from maize/corn cheaply and that coincided with the developments that allowed farmers to increase acerage and density of production for corn on the US plains.
Now the general western population have a taste for those foods which can be cheaply produced it is a problem we each have to face on a daily basis. I put on 3lbs in December! stricter diet now in place, who can only eat 6 biscuits at a time?
So, starting the gym again this week. I massively struggle with breakfast, don't like/can't eat porridge, cereal (bran and muesli has too many calories, and the two pieces of toast I used to have is not an option as I'm trying to loose weight.
Have te you tried the 16/8 diet, I mentioned it in the porridge thread elsewhere.
It means you can skip breakfast if you want.
Ive been on it for over 2 years now and it was completely life transforming.
i used come home from work a basically do nothing as I was tired. Now have loads of energy all day.
Its only tough for about a week as your body soon adapts. Most people have completely lost the ability to burn fat as they get all their energy from the food they eat.
This way you train your body to use fat reserves instead.
If your working out along side the diet google the "lean gains diet"" to see how to do it.
you have to watch the carbs though!
Now, I'm eating a handful of walnuts (fatty, but a decent protein source and the fat is burnt at the gym) for breakfast, with a couple of espressos + protein shake. Lunch is baked or grilled meat of some sort, with leaves / cucumber / toms / beetroot / spring onions, I split it into two helpings and have them an hour and half or so apart. Gym or workout at home, then a protein shake. Dinner is baked or grilled meat with lots of veg. Last night I had baked chicken with broccoli, cauliflower and sprouts. Tonight is scrambled eggs with cracked black pepper and salad. I'll eat between dinner and bed but only something like a low fat yoghurt with another small helping of nuts and seeds.
Hope this helps.
Edit. I forgot to add I drink water / lemon and ginger or green tea all day. Normally between 1 and 2 litres of water plus 5 or 6 cups of tea. I don't have an issue sleeping due to the caffeine in the green tea, but you have to be careful with lemon and ginger. Drink too much and the ginger gives you the shits (although this could count as accelerated weight loss!).
I can't help about the shape I'm in, I can't sing I ain't pretty and my legs are thin
But don't ask me what I think of you, I might not give the answer that you want me to
I wonder if it's the same thing that keeps anyone stuck in anything - essentially they don't want to make the necessary changes. Once they do, they will. A bit like the "motivation" myth - people do what they want to do.
I think it's breakable by evaluation - if you rationally considered the changes you'd need to make, you'd probably find that they're neither onerous nor particularly huge. So in this case calorie counting might work for some people - if you could be inside a weight-loss calorie budget while still being allowed the odd biscuit and meals you enjoyed then it would look quite different from if you thought you'd be on cabbage soup for six months.
Mebbe.