Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

I am currently against all diets. They're all stupid and cannot be maintained. I think the best way to lose weight is to gradually change the way you eat. Increase sashimi intake by one or two nights a week. Order a side salad instead of fries every other time. Cut way down on sugar. And reduce drinking to one to three days a week.

Once you get there, order the fish when you wanted the steak. Have chicken breast when you want the pork. Add another sushi day per week. Have one large meal a day and eat protein-and-veggie-heavy, much smaller meals the rest of the time.

Take in fewer calories than you expend.* But if you try to change the way you eat all at once, you will fail.

TM

*And yes, I see that based on that review, I guess I am now a smug lean person.

I both agree and disagree. Agree that diets are stupid, unless your diet is just what you eat, which is not what you mean. However, if your diet (in the what you eat sense) needs real change, then it's hard to make little changes on the margin -- it works much better (in my experience, which may not be right for anyone else) to make some big changes all at once. But agree that the big changes should be faddish, but along the lines you suggest -- smaller portions, less sugar and drinking, more vegetables and less carbs, etc.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I both agree and disagree. Agree that diets are stupid, unless your diet is just what you eat, which is not what you mean. However, if your diet (in the what you eat sense) needs real change, then it's hard to make little changes on the margin -- it works much better (in my experience, which may not be right for anyone else) to make some big changes all at once. But agree that the big changes should be faddish, but along the lines you suggest -- smaller portions, less sugar and drinking, more vegetables and less carbs, etc.

I don't think we're saying different things. I don't think what I said amounts to little changes on the margin. If you reduce meal size for 2 meals a day, significantly and replace two big meals with (healthy) sushi, that's a fairly big change. It's manageable. And if you succeed in doing this, you can take the next step. But if you try to cut out almost all carbs for veggies and/or cut out all drinking and sugar altogether, you will fail.

TM

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by thurgreedmarshall

i don't think we're saying different things. I don't think what i said amounts to little changes on the margin. If you reduce meal size for 2 meals a day, significantly and replace two big meals with (healthy) sushi, that's a fairly big change. It's manageable. And if you succeed in doing this, you can take the next step. But if you try to cut out almost all carbs for veggies and/or cut out all drinking and sugar altogether, you will fail.

Tm

food fight!!!

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

I don't think we're saying different things. I don't think what I said amounts to little changes on the margin. If you reduce meal size for 2 meals a day, significantly and replace two big meals with (healthy) sushi, that's a fairly big change. It's manageable. And if you succeed in doing this, you can take the next step. But if you try to cut out almost all carbs for veggies and/or cut out all drinking and sugar altogether, you will fail.

TM

Maybe it just depends on the individual. I stopped drinking, for other reasons, and it makes a big difference. I miss it once or twice a week, and it's a drag in some social situations, but it hasn't been that hard. In a way, it's easier to make big changes, because less thinking is involved.

From that book review, part of the problem is how good we have gotten at making food that we want to eat:

In 1965, some scientists locked people in a room where they could only eat nutrient sludge dispensed from a machine. Even though the volunteers had no idea how many calories the nutrient sludge was, they ate exactly enough to maintain their normal weight, proving the existence of a “sixth sense” for food caloric content. Next, they locked morbidly obese people in the same room. They ended up eating only tiny amounts of the nutrient sludge, one or two hundred calories a day, without feeling any hunger. This proved that their bodies “wanted” to lose the excess weight and preferred to simply live off stored fat once removed from the overly-rewarding food environment. After six months on the sludge, a man who weighed 400 lbs at the start of the experiment was down to 200, without consciously trying to reduce his weight.

And to tie that back to what I was just saying,

A few weeks ago Guyenet announced The Bland Food Cookbook, a collection of tasteless recipes guaranteed to be low food-reward and so discourage overeating. It was such a natural extension of his philosophy that it took me a whole ten seconds to realize it was an April Fools joke. But why should it be? Shouldn’t this be exactly the sort of thing we’re going for?

I asked him, and he responded that:

When people I don't want to discuss it with ask me how I have lost weight, I tell them I only eat jicama on even-numbered days and days of the week spelled with an "r."

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

And reduce drinking to one to three days a week.

I can do this, but all 7 nights, right?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Adder

And I think they do way less processed foods in general.

We have good friends in Austria and i have spent much time there. There is a very established organic (BIO) food industry. You can eat carefully raised/grown foods with little hassle, and I do not think the price penalty you pay here. But it is a small country, and I don't think those things transfer easily here.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

We have good friends in Austria and i have spent much time there. There is a very established organic (BIO) food industry. You can eat carefully raised/grown foods with little hassle, and I do not think the price penalty you pay here. But it is a small country, and I don't think those things transfer easily here.

You don't have to eat organic to give up processed foods. You just cook from scratch more, and eat fewer things from packages.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

If you reduce meal size for 2 meals a day, significantly

TM

This. Bringing luches to work, even prepared "unhealthy" foods, lets me control portion size. Eating out in America is very hard to manage.

[greatwhitenorthchick]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I have a friend whose wife has them fasting all day one or two days a week, which sounds faddish and miserable to me, but different strokes, amiright?

What works for me (and I work out a lot, but I think keeping weight off is more due to what you eat than how often you work out):

fast once a week (only eat breakfast, don't eat anything else for the rest of the day)
during the week -- eat vegan/vegetarian
weekends -- eat/drink whatever I want

I am lucky in that I didn't have to think about weight at all until I turned 45. Now I think about it more often than I did and what I've learned is that I respond best to being super disciplined for part of the week, and going hog-wild for the rest of the week. But my hog-wild is not all that hog-wild these days (e.g. I am not chugging tequila on Saturdays).

I think you just have to find what works best for you through a little trial and error.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

I did not crash, but I had paralyzing leg cramps for much of the final hilly two miles of the race.

AND I BLAME YOU.

Only go down the hills. Not up. Up is the worst.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

Yeah. Why do you think I can't drop the last 7 pounds to get to an ideal, "I can actually see abs," weight?

TM

I only had abs when I was running 50-60 miles/week (also I was 28).

In fact, that's the only time I lost weight from running. At that mileage it's hard to eat enough to keep up.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by Adder

There's really quite a bit of science on this and it's just not as simple as that.

Although it's is a useful shorthand. If you're net negative you're probably not going in the wrong direction, but you aren't necessarily making progress.



Re exercise, really? How'd you get around? Drive from your driveway to the drive through to park immediately in front of your office?

One reason the French and the rest of the world do better than us is that they have a lot more movement built into their transportation. Obviously not the only factor, as they also typically haven't had their systems fucked with by the food industry's drive to put processed sugar in everything.



I don't think they went through the "low fat" phase we went so hard for in the '90s that super-charged the addition of processed sugars. And I think they do way less processed foods in general.

I was attending a summer law school program in France - I was pretty lazy. My only exercise was walking to the elevated train from my dorm (not that far), which stopped right at the university. Definitely less walking on a daily basis compared to commuting to downtown Chicago from the burbs.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?

I only had abs when I was running 50-60 miles/week (also I was 28).

In fact, that's the only time I lost weight from running. At that mileage it's hard to eat enough to keep up.

I remember those days. I had to eat softserve at my dorm's dining hall every day just to stop getting skinnier.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

I realized that a calorie has different effects on different people in my 30s and became way less judge-y and shitty about weight issues.

TM

Sounds like someone needs to go find PPNYC and apologize to her?

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Sounds like someone needs to go find PPNYC and apologize to her?

I'll fly to NYC to witness this.