I hate dieting!

[Grall]

Been on a self-inflicted/enforced regimen for well over a month now to try and lose some weight, considering I'm only 20ish months away from my 40th birthday. Ugh, where the hell did my life go?!

Anyway, I'm eating breakfast these days, something I usually skip because of lazyness, and staying away from sweets. I did buy some nice dark chocolate the other day (Amedei 63% and 70%, and Michel Cluizel Noir au Grúe de Cacao; yummy stuff!), but I only treated myself to a few squares so far. Other than that, I've only had fruit and some raspberry jam with my breakfast oatmeal porridge that one might classify as sweet.

For dinner, I rely on those stupid little frozen ready-made meals that supermarkets are full of these days. They're around 370-400 grams which helps to keep track of how much exactly I put into my mouth, but it doesn't exactly help quench my hunger! I love to eat good food (bit of a gourmand, I'm afraid), and even though I've been doing this for quite a while now and my stomach has shrunk, I still feel damn hungry every single day. So it's been hell, haha!

Then again, it was like this last time I also went through this procedure, but that was ~8 years ago now. I went a bit overboard that time though with the dieting and gymming (dropped ~25kg in roughly 5 months), then became burnt out and lost interest, and eventually fell back in my old bad habits. So I try to take it easier now. Maybe get a longer, more lingering effect this time...

So, in an attempt to exercise a bit more (which I don't really do these days despite paying for gym membership every bloody month...meh) I've bought a Polar watch with a pulse sensor strap, and a GPS unit + USB reader to track how far I've walked. I don't run - I haven't the build for it currently just for starters, plus my knees and back aren't really up to it anymore, and I never liked to run anyway even when I was a kid. So I walk instead. There's a lot of areas good for walking around where I live, but I've been over them already so many times already both summer and winter, I thought this might help. Can't use my mountainbike either unfortunately - blasted knees. I've got uneven cartilage under my kneecaps, hurts like hell when I pedal uphill. No doctor I've talked to has been able to offer any remedy...

Anyway, the watch itself is pretty decent, it doesn't actually just have a simple timer or stopwatch function which is kinda annoying, but other than that it's nice. It does what it's supposed to, and can display a lot of different bits of information (which you can configure easily yourself). The accessories cost a friggin bundle though, and the blister pack of the GPS sliced into the pad of my right thumb when opening it; curse those damn finnish-chinese blister packs to hell!

The gadgets SEEM to work... Dunno if I can really trust the results the GPS thingy spits out though, but if it says I walked such-and-such a distance then I guess it's correct (unless it's an original pentium chip driving it. ), even though it feels weird if the route I took really is as long as the watch says it is.

So in closing, I didn't really want to say anything. Just wanted to vent some frustration over not being able to gorge on my favorite foods, lol! Anyone have any good healthy food recipes that are easy to prepare and feels filling and satisfying in the stomach? Hehe.

 

[RobertR1]

Then again, it was like this last time I also went through this procedure, but that was ~8 years ago now. I went a bit overboard that time though with the dieting and gymming (dropped ~25kg in roughly 5 months), then became burnt out and lost interest, and eventually fell back in my old bad habits. So I try to take it easier now. Maybe get a longer, more lingering effect this time...

So in closing, I didn't really want to say anything. Just wanted to vent some frustration over not being able to gorge on my favorite foods, lol! Anyone have any good healthy food recipes that are easy to prepare and feels filling and satisfying in the stomach? Hehe.

Looks like you learned your lesson from the last time you tried this. Dieting doesn't work. It's a temporary fix. What works is a slow lifestyle change. Slowly keep adding more healthy choices to your diet instead of a dramatic overhaul. Don't do "spoil days." Have treats as you see fit. If you start eating healthy, excess sweets will make you feel like shit and over time you'll naturally cut back on them. When I hear "oh i eat super healthy mon-sat but sunday is my spoil day!" I can tell right away it's a recipe for failure and every time, it comes true.

As for excercise, walking is good but you might get bored of it after a while. Get your knees looked at. If they're bad now, they'll just get worse as you get older. You're better off getting them worked on now, having some downtime and then being able to engage in multiple activities so you can toggle between and avoid burn out. Even now, you should be able to swim with your knees as they are, along with upper body workouts. Push ups, pullups, abs and core workouts combined with walking and swimming will do wonders and best part, no expensive equipment required and thus, no excuses.

At the end of the day, becoming healhty and fit really requires just one commitment and that is to stop lying to yourself. People love to make excuses on why they can't eat healthy or don't have time to exercise. Its' all bullshit. A common scenario I see is this; people will start up a very strict workout plan, miss a day and then go "I'll just start again next week." All they're doing is giving them selves an easy out. If you miss a day or two for whatever reason, WHO CARES!? keep going on with other days as planned. There no need to waste the rest of the week and try to work out harder the following week to catch up. People do this all the time and eventually just give up. Just makes you go wow...

You've been counter ranted

 

[Davros]

Use the Davros diet - poverty
It really does work

 

[WhiningKhan]

Actually, I've started the first real diet of my life a couple of weeks ago. I've always been skeptic of the Atkins-style low carb method, but I decided to try it. I have to say it it seems to work. Weight seems to be in a steady decline, I haven't had that usual afternoon coma at work I've had for a while, and I can eat all the meat and cheese I want... I just have to floss often due to the all the meat getting between my teeth.

 

[Grall]

Atkins is a fun and expensive way to a cardiac infarction... You may lose weight fast initially by following it (although over time it's roughly equal to just eating varied diet but reducing the amount), but all that saturated fat is still gonna fuck up your cholesterol levels and blood vessels.

And like I said, feeding to such a high extent on protein is expensive, and the environmental impact of creating all that protein in the first place is also very major...

RobertR1:
Thanks for the advice - although most of it is common sense really... I'm not really dieting from a strict definition of the word - as in I'm not following any kind of diet. I just keep down the amount (and staying away from candy).

Swimming should be OK for my knees since it's impact-free training, but impacts isn't my problem, really. I can't do breaststroke these days. My knees just can't handle torque on the joint any more, hurts like a sonofabitch after a little while. Dunno if part of the reason is I used to swim and take part in competitions a lot in my youth. I may have suffered some wear and tear from that.

Freestyle crawl is OK though, but having relatively low stamina, it's a lot of work crawling. Besides, swimming just isn't fun to do on your own... Meh.

I'm gonna pull myself together one of these days and go back to the gym, working out can be oddly fun and relaxing actually.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Best thing to protect your knees is to keep weight off. Use that as a motivation to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

The thing with sweets and snacks, is if you really like something you should be able to eat it. You just have to learn to control how much you eat it. If you try to cut it out entirely, eventually you'll binge. Seriously, part of being alive and enjoying yourself is eating. What you need is fewer and smaller sugary or junk snacks, not cutting them out completely. I would say drinking soda/pop is probably one of the worst things you can do to your body, so drinking it on rare occasions and not daily is best.

Walking is great for you. Walk every day. Take a bus and walk somewhere new. Find some hiking trails. It really doesn't seem like it's doing much, but it does a lot for you. If you go from a walking job, to a sitting job, you put on weight fast. For other exercise I prefer activities to hitting the gym. Doing reps is really boring for me. I'd rather play a sport or do something in a group. See if you can find something, even if it's going to the park and throwing a football around with a friend. Bad knees is limiting, but there should be something you'll find comfortable. Doing a few pushups, pullups and/or crunches every morning never hurt anybody. Only takes a few minutes.

Never skip breakfast. Oatmeal is a good breakfast supposedly because the carbs are burned slowly, so you have energy throughout the morning rather than in a big high followed by a crash. Never skip lunch, or dinner either. If you feel hungry try drinking some water or herbal tea to see if that helps before you decide to eat, but you should have a mid morning and mid afternoon snack. Remember that juice is basically sugar, so you actually don't want to drink a ton of juice. It's easy to drink a lot of calories without thinking. Pick something healthy for your snacks.

One thing I heard, which I like as a recommendation for simple healthy eating, is only shop on the periphery of the grocery store. I'm not sure if grocery stores are laid out the same way in other countries, but here all of the produce, meat and dairy are on the walls and all the canned and boxed food are in the middle. Shop on the periphery and eat a variety of things. Make sure you don't load up on one thing like meats or dairy. The thing you can eat the most of is vegetables. But don't worry about trying to micro-manage nutrients and vitamins. It's just too complicated. You should be able to eat a lot of different things without worry about it too much if you stay away from canned and boxed foods. Oh, and the bakery might be on the periphery, but cakes don't count as things you should eat regularly

I definitely don't follow all of these rules perfectly. I drank a lot of pop as a teenager and that's a tough habit to break, but I cut down a lot after college, and in the last few years I've cut way way down. Still, I'm eating much healthier than I had been in my early twenties, and it helps. My biggest problem is motivation for exercise and staying up way too late .... like right now. Getting a really good nights sleep is also a good way to keep your diet on track. If you don't sleep right you'll want to eat more calories to fight fatigue the next day. I need to figure out how to get my sleeping back on track and fight my insomnia.

 

[WhiningKhan]

Atkins is a fun and expensive way to a cardiac infarction... You may lose weight fast initially by following it (although over time it's roughly equal to just eating varied diet but reducing the amount), but all that saturated fat is still gonna fuck up your cholesterol levels and blood vessels.

And like I said, feeding to such a high extent on protein is expensive, and the environmental impact of creating all that protein in the first place is also very major...

A common misconception, and also what I used to think of it. If you do it _correctly_, it's not expensive and it actually improves the cholesterol levels.

Potential favorable changes in triglyceride and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol values should be weighed against potential unfavorable changes in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol values when low-carbohydrate diets to induce weight loss are considered.[82] A 2008 systematic review of randomized controlled studies that compared low-carbohydrate diets to low-fat/low-calorie diets and found that measurements of weight, HDL cholesterol, triglyceride levels and systolic blood pressure were significantly better in groups that followed low-carbohydrate diets. The authors of this review also found a higher rate of attrition in groups with low-fat diets, and concluded that "evidence from this systematic review demonstrates that low-carbohydrate/high-protein diets are more effective at 6 months and are as effective, if not more, as low-fat diets in reducing weight and cardiovascular disease risk up to 1 year," but they also called for more long-term studies.[83]

This is also what I've heard from everybody I know that have followed the diet properly and have had their blood evaluated - there has been a major improvement in cholesterol values.

It also does not mean you have to stuff yourself with huge amounts of protein. That is hazardous for your health.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I wish someone would come up with a Bacon died. I could eat fried bacon and eggs everyday. But not the healthiest thing in the world even if it's easy.

My cousin does the atkins diet also and it works for him. Unfortunately he REALLY likes sushi and rice. So after a few months he'll start craving rice, and then in a matter of weeks will undo all the weight loss he had.

Rather than following this or that diet. I feel it's much better to just design your diet around the things you like to eat. Forcing yourself to eat things you don't like or find bland is just asking to fail.

That doesn't mean that you can't do like a couple people have mentioned. Gradually change your diet if you have some really unhealthy habits If your drinking a 10 liters of pop a week, grandually cut it down. Eating half a pie a day? Start cutting down and experimenting with other foods to find things that you might like but never knew about.

And dear lord cut down on carbs if you don't do much activities. Best way I know of to gain weight fast. Eat lots of bread and pasta and don't exercise or do other activities.

Something else I'm doing more and more. There's studies that have shown that when you listen to your body it'll actually keep it in decent condition with minimal fat retention. The same mechanism that is there to tell you to stop eating (which many many people ignore) also turns up the rate of fat burn after a meal. But at some point after ignore it over so many years it loses efficiency. Less fat is burned, the body becomes confused on when it should be telling you to stop, it starts to store more fat rather than just burning it right away. And going back after going past that point is difficult if not nearly impossible.

Unfortunately for many children growning up, we were taught to eat everything and not leave anything on the plate. Even if we weren't hungry anymore.

Your body has natural mechanisms to tell you when you've had enough and tell you when you need food. Unfortunately almost everyone is taught to ignore many of those. Eat all your food as a kid. Only eat at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Etc... Rather would have been better if we could have listened to the body. Eat when hungry, stop when not. Eat 5-6 times a days. More if you are more active. You'll naturally eat less (well except for that damn lifelong conditioning again) each time and your body will more easily use what it needs and demand more when it needs it. Spreading out meals just means you'll get hungrier and it becomes easier to overeat. Especially if you are trying to store enough energy for 5 hours of activity rather than 2 hours of activity.

Heck the body will even tell to an extent what to eat and what not to eat by controlling what food by controlling what you feel like eating. But again, we've been trained and conditioned away from that from birth. Eat all of X food even if it makes your body want to vomit. If your body NEEDS something in a food source, it'll make sure that food source is something you'll want to eat.

It's not perfect. Even if we weren't trained since birth to ignore it. You'd still have to avoid binging while your body adjusts.

It's interesting to watch as my palate changes not only from year to year but often from week to week and day to day. What I craved last week might not interest me at all this week. Unfortunately old habits are hard to break. And there's still that urge to finish all the food on my plate even if my body is telling me that it's full. But in my head all the lessons hammered into me while a child makes it difficult to push away a plate with 2-3 more bites of food on it.

Regards,
SB

 

[Mariner]

Weight loss? Meh - piece of piss. Just drop the carbs and go on a paleolithic-style diet.

Lots of protein, fresh fruit, vegetables but avoid processed foods. Stop eating cereals (so no bread or pasta), avoid too many starchy foods such as potatoes, rice or pulses and avoid refined sugars.

Though not really overweight, I tried this diet a couple of years ago and dropped about 7 pounds in 2 weeks. My weight has since stabilised at this lower figure even though I do tend to eat potatoes and rice a few times a week. On the other hand, I rarely eat bread or pasta any more. My main vices are cheese and a few squares of dark chocolate each day!

The main thing is that, if you eat plenty of animal protein, you don't really feel as hungry so the actual quantity of food you eat seems to drop.

My diet is pretty high in fat and quite high in salt too, for that matter, but I'm of the view that this isn't a problem at my age (37). The theory that our bodies are designed for the stone age diet seems pretty logical to me so I don't believe animal fats are as unhealthy for us as many do.

One noticeable thing is that have less wind (i.e. gas) than in the past which is good for my girlfriend but not so good for opportunities for toilet humour!

 

[AlexV]

I wish someone would come up with a Bacon died. I could eat fried bacon and eggs everyday.

The Anabolic Diet/Solution by Mauro di Pasquale. Or Duchaine's BodyOpus. Neither is really optimal, mind you, but they somewhat fit the Bacon diet profile.

 

[MrGaribaldi]

Here's a quick suggestion for a low-fat, easy and quick to make dniner. Carbs can be varied depending on if you want low-carb or not.

Ingredients:
Filet of pork
Chinese cabbage
Vinegar
Soy sauce

Slice up the pork in thin slices and cut the cabbage into 1 cm thick strips. (I usually use 1/4 of the cabbage cut length wise, so you get both the green leaf and the white part)

Heat a non-stick pan (cast iron should also be good if properly maintained) so it's nice and warm.
Season the meat with chilli, turmeric, ginger and garlic powder then put in the spices before putting in the unseasoned meat, and fry the meat for a bit. Throw in the cabbage and let it simmer for a while, releasing water and reducing the cabbage.

Add a bit of vinegar, how much depends on taste, and a good helping of soy sauce and stir it in.
Add a cup of water or so, then season to taste with salt, pepper, cinnamon.

Serve with rice, noodles or double up the cabbage for no-carbs.

It is said that chilli and cayenne pepper helps increase your metabolism and cinnamon your energy intake. Turmeric, ginger and garlic is supposed to be generally healthy. And it tastes good, so it doesn't matter if it's not true

If not on a diet, or allowing for a bit of fat and some carbs, I'd recommend to preheat the pan, put in a bit of oil, and put the seasoning in the oil for a bit. It'll help release the flavour, though you might cough when adding the turmeric. Also, instead of just adding water for the sauce, you can thicken it with maizena (corn starch) or potato starch.

Whole dish is usually done in the time it takes to cook the rice, so less than 20 minutes.

 

[Mize]

Welcome to 40ish.

As I approached 30 I was running 40 miles/week, could bench press 315 lbs which was 150 lbs over my then bodyweight and ate like some olympic athlete member of PETA.

Then I had two kids and my career took off.

At 43 I'm getting back into shape after nearly 13 years of work obsession. In that time I stopped running, gained enough weight that running will trash my knees (thank you gourmet restaurants and good vodka) and can now only bench press 215 which is just barely over my own bodyweight.

Major

Moral of the story? Work and kids are bad for your health

 

[Mize]

Weight loss? Meh - piece of piss. Just drop the carbs and go on a paleolithic-style diet.

I love the theory behind the paleolithic diet; our ancestors didn't have heart disease, cancer or a host of other maladies "caused" by modern foods. They tend to leave out that most of them were dead before their 18th birthday. Data set a bit biased?

In all seriousness, an hour of relatively intense cardio per day and a reasonable weight training regime will allow most people to eat what they want so long as they keep all things in moderation and drink far less booze than I do.

 

[Vadi]

Here in Vienna they are promoting mountainbikes with electric motors for uphills. They are a bit expensive but shoud help with your knees. Also avoid sharp bumps. If you're not constantly riding a bike you probably overdo it and get joint pain. Control yourself and start to ride more agressively after six months of regular riding or so. And do excersises for the knees and abdominal muscles.
Also

I eat more fat than him, "bad" fat is acutally important for digestion. Sour dough bread (fortunately very common around here) is nice too.
Oh and crunches don't train the deep abdominal muscles which are important for basically any sport.

 

[nintenho]

Weight loss? Meh - piece of piss. Just drop the carbs and go on a paleolithic-style diet.
Lots of protein, fresh fruit, vegetables but avoid processed foods. Stop eating cereals (so no bread or pasta), avoid too many starchy foods such as potatoes, rice or pulses and avoid refined sugars.
Though not really overweight, I tried this diet a couple of years ago and dropped about 7 pounds in 2 weeks. My weight has since stabilised at this lower figure even though I do tend to eat potatoes and rice a few times a week. On the other hand, I rarely eat bread or pasta any more. My main vices are cheese and a few squares of dark chocolate each day!
The main thing is that, if you eat plenty of animal protein, you don't really feel as hungry so the actual quantity of food you eat seems to drop.
My diet is pretty high in fat and quite high in salt too, for that matter, but I'm of the view that this isn't a problem at my age (37). The theory that our bodies are designed for the stone age diet seems pretty logical to me so I don't believe animal fats are as unhealthy for us as many do.
One noticeable thing is that have less wind (i.e. gas) than in the past which is good for my girlfriend but not so good for opportunities for toilet humour!

The problem with that diet is that it assumes 10,000 years of agriculture wasn't enough for anybody to adapt to it. Hell, Native American hunter-gatherers were lactose intolerant (modern Indians are also often lactose intolerant) but every paleo diet out there recommends drinking milk and eating dairy.

As far as your weight loss, honestly it sounds like it was largely just water loss, which happens when you have lose the stored glycogen (glycogen can only be created from carbs). Compared to fat, glycogen is the more easily used energy storage molecule and it's stored in the liver and muscle cells instead of adipose tissue (flab). When your blood sugar is low, your body's insulin/glucagon system always burns glycogen first and when it is too high, it always stores the excess glucose as glycogen first. Some people assume that excess carbs can make you insulin resistant but then you have to consider that...

Japan, which is on a relatively low-fat high-carb diet, has the lowest obesity rates in the world. And now that I think about it, if you were a hunter-gatherer subsisting on whatever you could find in the wild, it may have been useful to have a good deal of fat so that you could survive famines.

To me, the more reasonable approach seems to me having a low-calorie "balanced" diet. It would be a good idea to also keep away from too many foods with a high glycemic index rating but you shouldn't avoid carbs altogether.

 

[digitalwanderer]

I hate dieting too, so I just stop eating every other day. Seems easier to remember.

 

[Davros]

MrGaribaldi idea of a meal - meat + cabbage

 

[Squilliam]

To deal with the hunger you have to also change how you eat. The problem with the ready made food is that you can eat it in about 5 minutes. So what I suggest is that you bulk that out with some rabbit food which is high in nutrients but low in energy and/or have a small glass of water before eating and a larger one during/after. Remember it takes about 15 minutes for you to feel 'full'.

Oh and don't forget to make sure you've got a balanced diet. If you're craving fat,protein, carbs, Vitamin Davros then if you eat food devoid or with very little of what your body wants you'll stay hungry.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Or just stop eating for 3-4 days, that'll break your hunger cycle too and makes it real easy to control your appetite.

(Oh, the advantages of a misspent youth! )

A friend just linked me to this, which I'm not sure if it applies quite perfect or not but it made me think of this thread:

 

[MrGaribaldi]

Hehe, nah, I prefer a balanced meal with carbs. But substituting carbs with veggies works as well.
I prefer a balanced diet, with carbs meat and veggies.

BTW: stopping eating will tell you body to store fat as soon as you start eating again. So not working out in the long while. Better to go with Silent Buddhas suggestion of eating a small amount when you feel like it.

Ps. why eat prefab meals, when you can make from scratch with little effort, and better results...