Diet Help...

[Durakken]

Does anyone know where I can get advice on a good diet... I'm not talking crappy pop diet BS but actual good diet information... or anyone that can give some advice here.

Why do I ask... because I need to lose weight and I know I have a horrendous diet that I need to change soon. I weigh 400+lbs and depending on who you ask that is about 100-200lbs over healthy. I am limited in my exorcising ability so that only really leaves food to handle losing the weight... and that's bad new for me cuz I just plain suck with food. I can't plan around it and I'm uncreative with food selections and cooking... So even though I know pasta = high carbs and I shouldn't eat it and fruit = something that i should I eat I always end up eating pasta because the fruit runs out and I can't get more or eating fruit and eating fruits and veggies is meh to me...dunno why.... plus I just don't think when buy the food so I need help.

So yeah, any help would be appreciated...

 

[TheFearmonger]

You could always try an acai diet.
For females;
Acai Fit: https://www.acai-fit.net/new4/?id=107426-101572-107538&aff=XP
Or, if you are a male, you should try;
Acai Extreme Plus: https://www.acaiextremeplus.com/?partner=LCM_promo&referenceid=377278710

These are both free trials(just pay S&H,), and both are high quality, reputable products. I have heard they are especially efficient with "smart colon cleanse", which may still have free trials. Just make sure if you don't see results, cancel the offer before they stick you with it(79.99 a month if you do like it). It works pretty well, but be prepared to , um... crap. A LOT. But, I did both trials, and lost close to 20 lbs. in a month. I also felt a little better in the day, not really more energetic, but more awake. Be careful, tho. A lot of scam acai products are cheaper, but don't work and can cause harmful side effects. These are highly regarded, however. Also, running helped me a lot.

Good Luck and God( ) bless!!

 

[ImprobableJoe]

NOOO!!!! NO ACAI DIET!!!!

That stuff is a giant scam. If you want to lose weight, you need to take in fewer calories than you burn. That's it. There are tricks that can help to a small degree, but the main thing is to eat more protein, fruits and vegetables, and some whole grains, and cut down the sugar and starchy foods. Switching from regular Coke to Diet Coke saves you like 150 calories per can, and you'd be amazed at how many junk calories you can eliminate by going through all of your food choices and finding a lower-calorie alternative. Also, look for foods that give you pretty good bang for your buck as far as making you feel full. Lettuce is sort of boring, but if you eat a head of iceberg lettuce in a light vinaigrette dressing, you won't feel the need for a second helping of pasta.

 

[TheFearmonger]

No, Joe, they aren't all scams. I was giving the names of ones that were more reputable than others I had seen. These aren't scams, tho. I actually lost quite a bit of stomach fat on them. But Joe did bring up a good point about the diet drinks. You definitely wanna do that if you haven't already. Some of them can be more like an... accquired taste, but they do help.
ps Joe... they seriously do help(acai, I mean). Here is where I actually first heard of acai dieting; http://www.cnnhealthonlinereports.com/news/dieting/acai-berry-products-reviewed.html
It's CNN, which I read from time to time. I was looking up stuff on the swine flu, and stumbled on this. Tried them, and it worked fairly well. Not the results they said, of course, but certainly noticeable.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

No, Joe, they aren't all scams. I was giving the names of ones that were more reputable than others I had seen. These aren't scams, tho. I actually lost quite a bit of stomach fat on them. But Joe did bring up a good point about the diet drinks. You definitely wanna do that if you haven't already. Some of them can be more like an... accquired taste, but they do help.
ps Joe... they seriously do help(acai, I mean). Here is where I actually first heard of acai dieting; http://www.cnnhealthonlinereports.com/news/dieting/acai-berry-products-reviewed.html
It's CNN, which I read from time to time. I was looking up stuff on the swine flu, and stumbled on this. Tried them, and it worked fairly well. Not the results they said, of course, but certainly noticeable.

Dude.... you've just PROVED MY POINT!!! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :mrgreen:

Look at that site again. It isn't CNN at all! It is a fake site that links to CNN, but it is in fact an advertisement web page. You got scammed, bro.

 

[Netheralian]

I am limited in my exorcising ability ...

Obviously you are limited on your imagination to find exercising alternatives as well as food alternatives. There are plenty of things you can do that don't involve going to a gym. Get a Wii even - gotta be better than doing nothing. Or how about one of these:http://www.powerballs.com/ - You don't even have to get out of your chair...

 

[Durakken]

Fearmonger & Joe... Acai is apparently real, but almost every ad I see is obviously nonsensical BS so I haven't even thought of going that route ^.^

Netheralian... I'll look into that, any other suggestions?

 

[suzybrown]

Just FYI, fruit is also high carb. fruit = sugar = carbs

Easy plan -- 6 meals a day, every 3 hours

1 -- eggs & lettuce
2 -- protein shake (LOOK FOR LOW TO NO CARB WHEY POWDER) + 2 tbs all natural peanut butter (MUST BE NATURAL)
3 -- fish& brocc
4 -- protein shake +2 tbs pnb
5 -- poultry & green beans
6 -- shake again

The meat portion should be no larger than your hand. At this point, eat as much veg as you need to in order to satiate.

Throw EVERYTHING except these few food items out of your house, & ONLY buy these exact foods. Go marketing every day, and keep only 1 day's worth of food in the house to prevent you from over eating. WALK to the market if at all possible. If you can't, walk at least 30 min (total) per day.

Sounds drastic but so is being 200lbs overweight. (I don't know who you think you're fooling with that "100-200lbs too much depending on who you ask." Unless you're 7'9" no one should weigh 300lbs)

 

[TheFearmonger]

Thank you for pointing that out, joe. I, uh... knew that. Yeah! :idea: I was just testing you. Ah, whatever. It still worked, tho, so no harm no foul. I might take suzy's advice, it sounds, well... sound.
Oh, yeah, BTW, diet is the bigger part of losing weight anyway, but excercise is still very important.

 

[Giliell]

OK, first thing: Don't do any "protein shake" "potato" any such stuff diet.
Problem is: you will lose weight, but after you stop doing it, you'll fall back into old habits and gain even more.

Second thing: Don't switch to diet drinks, switch to water, tea, such stuff. Artificial sweeteners leave you hungry, because your body get's the signal "energy is coming", but since there is none, it will demand some. Artificial sweeteners are used for fattening pigs, which tell's you everything.

Third advice: Do a program where you learn about healthy eating. Weight Watchers and such don't only get you to lose weight, they also make you change your eating habbits and educate you about food, so it's a diet you can keep up after the slimmimg and hold your weight. Good thing: there are no forbidden foods. It is possible to include it into your daily life, even your social life.

 

[Raistlin Majere]

I'm no food expert, but exercise is certainly not out of the picture.

Walk everywhere you can, use a car less.

Swimming, if it's that season, is an excellent way to exercise. Low impact, good cardio work out, whether you do laps or, if you own your own pool, try running around the shallow end a few times where the water is about up to your stomach's height. Gives a good work out because of the resistance the water places on your motions.

If you can't do swimming for whatever reason, buy a Wii. Get the Wii Fit games that force you into doing work outs. They're also quite a lot of fun.

Even just swimming daily along with dieting will help you cut pounds off.

 

[borrofburi]

If you want to lose weight, you need to take in fewer calories than you burn.

While this is technically correct, there is some evidence to suggest that looking at it purely from a caloric standpoint results in unhealthy people: namely not all calories are equal, if all you eat is candy and celery you can keep your caloric intake pretty low, lose weight, and be really very unhealthy; if you eat healthy but keep your caloric intake very high, you might not lose much weight but you can still end up vastly healthier than thin people who eat poorly.

The following advice is ranked in terms of most important to least by order of appearance:

Stop eating sugar
The number 1 thing americans do to get over-weight: eat sugar, especially fructose, in large quantities. Cut out sugar from your diet, especially soda and other sugary drinks (as well as candy, ice cream, etc. (with the except of fruit and other naturally occuring sweet things)). Try to drink water. To be precise, cutting sugar entirely out of your diet is unhealthy because it would eliminate things like fruit and various vegetables, which are a very necessary and important part of a healthy diet; but what americans (and to a lesser extent other first-world countries) do is consume VASTLY too much sugar and need to severely extremely limit the amount they consume. Also, for the record, sugar substitutes really aren't much better than sugar itself (if better at all, there is some evidence to indicate that substitutes are much worse than sugar itself).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Stop eating processed foods
Try to cut processed foods. Make your own food from your own ingredients. Period. I eat a lot of oatmeal (with a little brown sugar), egg sandwhiches (with toasted bread that doesn't have sugar in it), rice (with fish protein (ok so that's slightly processed...)), and peanut butter and somethin sweet but not heavily processed (a *few* jellies/jams/preserves, bananas, occasionally honey but it's mostly fructose so I try to avoid it). This is not the healthiest diet, but it is mostly lightly-processed not-sugary semi-balanced meals (I left out fruit and veggies as sides, but you should eat a lot of those).

Suzybrown's meal ideas are ok: 6 meals a day is good (generally eat little but often, in part to counter the 20 minutes I talk about in the next paragraph), but I significantly disagree with the protein shake idea (but if you go with it anyway, make sure to get it without sugar, the last protein powder I got (because I was heavily exercising at the time) had more sugar in a serving than any sugary drink I could buy in the store (and it was pure crystalline fructose, the worst of sugars)).

Eat slowly
Oh also, chew your food a lot; it has cursory benefits like easier absorption in the stomach and uses up calories in the energy it takes to chew, and it allows you to enjoy your food, but the primary reason to chew extensively is that it slows you down. You see, the neurons in our stomach are kind of stupid and take a long time to realize we're full and for our brain to get the message from the neurons, this means there's a 20 minute window between when you're full and when you realize you're full, and you can consume a lot of food in 20 minutes (which is one of the primary reasons to eat often but eat very little (the others are that it tends to be healthier, clearly 3 meals a day is healthier for you than 1 gigantic meal a week)).

Fidgeting is good
Oh also fidget: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/28/health/28weight.html. Really the advice is just be generally restless, but still, I've met people who had fidgeting trained out of them. Fidgeting is not a substitute for exercise, but it's a start.


None of this, of course, is a miracle cure, but for most people it's a really good start.


Also that acai stuff is pretty much a scam. If it's not, find me one peer reviewed well controled study that indicates it's effective at anything more than eating a healthy amount of fruit is. If anything, aside from placebo, it's effective primarily because it makes people actually interested in consuming fruit.

Also don't do wii fit too heavily too quickly, ease into it like you would any exercise regime.

 

[salko7]

chew gum

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091027132245.htm

 

[Salv]

The thing about food is it's just fuel. If you understand how the body works and how the body processes fuel it might be easier to understand why people pick up or lose weight.

I reckon people don't eat enough good unsaturated fats. That's basically any fat which doesn't solidify when at room temp or when cooled, or hydrogenated fats? When I was still working out I would try and eat three parts carbs, two parts protein and one part fat. The protein portion size was basically my weight in grams divided by a thousand multiplied by two. So I weighed about 95 kilos I would try and take in 190 grams of protein. But I don't work out anymore, so I don't stick to that, but I definitely try and get enough fatty acids, from fish...etc. Just cut down on the carbs and saturated fats. Try and listen to your cravings, if you're craving something sweet, eat some grapes or other fruit. Try eat more meals but smaller portions, five meals should be alright. If you've already eaten and you're still hungry wait about half an hour then drink some water instead of eating. You don't necessarily need a ready made diet, you can make one yourself.

Your body does have certain needs though. You do need carbs, you do need proteins, you definitely need fats. All animal fats are bad. Fatty acids assist in the transportation of minerals, and what not, around the body. Although, I reckon it's going to be difficult to lose weight. It's probably a good idea to burn off the body's energy, but you're probably going to eat more because you're working out. I know of some cyclists who go out on a long cycle on a couple of cups of coffee. It's called bonking, or something on the lines. They're forcing the body to use up it's energy stores. Although that's very difficult to do. You feel weak and lethargic. But I don't reckon you need to do anything drastic. It just depends on how quickly you want to lose the weight.

 

[Salv]

Oh yeah, and just to add something from Bill Phillips. I used to read a bunch of his stuff a while back. He reckons when training take one day a week where allow yourself to eat what you want. Make it on a Saturday or whatever, eat pizza, drink coke. This is basically just so you don't give up on your stricter diets. If you allow yourself to cheat once then it's easier to do a second time...etc. But if you have one day to cheat, then you can get it out of your system if you really want to. You'll probably find after a while that you won't cheat on your cheating days.

 

[borrofburi]

The thing about food is it's just fuel. If you understand how the body works and how the body processes fuel it might be easier to understand why people pick up or lose weight.

Eh, this is a highly oversimplistic analogy. Again, it's the idea that food is just calories; it's not, and not all calories are equal.

I reckon people don't eat enough good unsaturated fats

This is not precisely correct. There is good evidence that we, americans, tend to eat too much omega 6 fats and not enough omega 3 fats, that is the ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 is highly imbalanced; you find omega 3 fats primarily in fish and fish protein, but you can find it in plenty of other foods as well (especially if you're explicitly seeking it).

 

[scalyblue]

eat foods with low caloric densities that are very satisfying, and start eating out of a bento; you shouldn't eat more than you can fit into a normal sized bento in one sitting, and your bento should be filled with things that you've cooked yourself from unprocessed ingredients.

I buy my beans raw, dried, and in bulk. If I want to make baked beans I make it myself, and I know exactly what's going into it. It's a lot harder to eat cookies when you make them with flour, sugar, and a solid stick of butter.

Don't diet. Don't deprive yourself of things because that just instills a mindset of reaching a goal and then throwing away the diet. You need to change your lifestyle, and that needs to start with what you put into you. Then it needs to start with exercise.

You're limited in exercise why? You can't get out and walk? If you sit around and listen to music it's burning a lot fewer calories than walking and listening to music. You lack the floor or wall to do modified pushups? Unless you're bedridden at the 'I wash myself with a rag on a stick' level, there is no excuse for lack of physical activity. Being active will also increase your mental acuity as well, there's no losing factor here except for a few aches and pains.

You want simple changes that make you not want to do anything? Get whole grain pasta instead of white pasta. Get plastic containers that hold only one cup, and make that your serving size.

If you aren't hungry enough to eat an entire apple, you're not hungry.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Don't diet. Don't deprive yourself of things because that just instills a mindset of reaching a goal and then throwing away the diet. You need to change your lifestyle, and that needs to start with what you put into you. Then it needs to start with exercise.

Yeah, don't try any stunt diets. Don't starve yourself or do anything ridiculous and unhealthy. Watch your portions and add fresh fruit and veggies to your diet, and you're on your way. Especially since you weigh 400 pounds and are completely inactive, you can probably lose weight on a 2000 calorie/day diet if you walk 20-30 minutes a day. Just that shift in your behavior, and a slight modification of your eating habits will probably knock off 2 pounds a week for at least a few months.

I've been trying to lose weight too, and I'm speaking from experience. I eat more or less normally, just without extra carbs like pasta, sugar, and rice, and I've lost 34 pounds since August 1. I'm on a high protein diet, but I'm eating lots of fruits and vegetables so I still get a certain amount of carbs every day. And, I have dessert every single night, and relatively frequent snacks. I just don't eat lots of processed crap, or giant portions of anything. I go for a walk almost every day, and I mess around with a Bowflex and the Wii a few times a week. We're talking about an average of about 45 minutes a day.

 

[dr_esteban]

As with the above post start doing some exercise even if it is only a short walk diet alone is pretty much impossible if you want to keep the weight off.

You might want to look into food addiction stuff as well.

 

[Durakken]

By diet i don't mean to eat nothing but rather change my diet to something that will be more balanced and better for me.