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Diet update

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by daniel, May 15, 2012.

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  1. davesrose

    davesrose Active Member

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    Weight loss does not eliminate type II diabetes....it helps prevent it in obese people who have not yet developed it (this is a pretty key point). Treating alcoholism is another preventative step in reducing diabetes.

    You missed my point about caloric intake: I wasn't arguing that reducing caloric intake reduces weight. I was arguing that many people get discouraged if they read their weight everyday. This is the main problem with obsessing over a goal: which since it focuses on a future outcome, we're programmed to be discouraged if our weight goes up a pound one day instead of seeing improvement if it drops a couple pounds in a week. A value, such as eliminating "a guilty pleasure" or taking the stairs over riding an elevator, has a better reinforcement for keeping a healthy lifestyle.
     
    #21 davesrose, May 18, 2012
  2. ProximalSuns

    ProximalSuns Senior Member

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    It does in many cases. People can get off insulin and Metformin.

    Obesity is the cause of many chronic conditions and Type II diabetes is one of the more common results of obesity.

    Ah...you did describe counting caloric intake and output as fanatical. It is absolutely essential to any successful weight control.

    Not sure if it is fair to consider life saving behavior as "obsessing". If people do not "obsess" over their insulin shots and blood sugar levels they die. If they don't obsess over their weight, they very often need to take insulin and obsess over blood sugar levels with blood tests several times a day.

    "Obsessive" tends to describe a behavioral problem. When behavior is life saving, the term is not applicable. Common sense survival skill and easy to do are more accurate terms for watching caloric/intake and output.
     
    #22 ProximalSuns, May 18, 2012
  3. mojo

    mojo Senior Member

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    Daniel you may be a bit anorexic.
     
    #23 mojo, May 18, 2012
  4. davesrose

    davesrose Active Member

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    Not "in many cases"...with preconditioned cases then they can get off insulin. For those that have already destroyed their pancreas, no amount of weight loss will change their diabetes.

    Not sure why you're still not understanding my points. I state that many obese folks do not respond well to obsessively checking the scale everyday. That it's best for them to focus on a healthy lifestyle...one that encourages not snacking and maybe taking the stairs. My posts about "goal" vs "value" is behavioral, and behavior is a factor in health (it's not innately positive or negative). What I've been trying to convey is that promoting a healthy lifestyle is not taking in extraneous calories and opting for some excercise. Continually checking a scale can be psychologically detramental when you're just seeing a slight fluctuation in weight and not the total stasis in weight loss.
     
    #24 davesrose, May 18, 2012
  5. Southern Dad

    Southern Dad Active Member

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    I do walk. I've got a pedometer tracker page on my web page one of my biggest issues with walking is that it is usually dark when I leave for work and dark when I get home from work. Walking in a rural area at night is a good way to wind up like those opossums in the middle of the road.

    So to fix that I went with putting computer monitors in front of a treadmill. Now, I have to get back into the routine of spending time on it.

    I'm not as big as Chris Christie... I'm 45 years old, 6'1", 220.4 lbs
     

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    #25 Southern Dad, May 18, 2012
  6. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    Weight loss (or gain) is as you say a matter of calories in vs. calories out. But counting every calorie is not necessarily the easiest way to achieve a favorable balance. Weight Watchers has put a lot of scientific study into the problem, including motivations and human behavior, and has come up with a "points" program whereby each food is assigned a point value, and foods which are more nutritious or more filling are given fewer points. This may seem counter-intuitive, but results show that it is easier to lose weight this way.

    You still need to burn more calories than you eat. But what's the easiest way to achieve this is not so simple.

    True.

    My doctor has approved of my weight goal. Actually, my 135 goal is 5 lbs heavier than I weighed some two decades ago, when I was able to jog 20 miles a week and weighed 130 lbs., and my doctor approved of my weight back then. The charts say that a healthy weight for my height is 124 to something like 150, so 135 is pretty much smack dab in the middle of the healthy range. I eat a lot of salad and veggies, but I also eat potatoes, whole grains, beans, corn, peas, nuts, oatmeal, tofu, fish (but no red meat or fowl), more fruit than I should, the occasional pizza, chocolate occasionally, and when not on a diet, chocolate frozen yogurt since my lactose intolerance prevents me from eating ice cream. And I enjoy all these things. This is not an anorexic lifestyle, or an anorexic weight.

    As for how often to weigh:

    My weight can fluctuate as much as 2 pounds from one day to the next. If I weigh only once a week, I can appear to gain weight when I've actually lost fat. What I do instead is weigh myself every morning, but I don't obsess or concern myself over this number (though I do take pleasure from a new low). What I do is record my average weight for the week, and I find that's a much better indication of my progress, since it smooths out the fluctuations.

    I am a compulsive overeater. When I am not vigilant I gain weight, and I've been obese several times in my life. I've experienced being unable to climb a couple of flights of stairs without feeling as though I was about to have a heart attack. I've also experienced being able to jog three miles and feeling so good I couldn't help laughing. (Runner's high, I suppose.)

    And there's no food in the world that tastes as good as being healthy feels. I don't exercise and eat healthy to live longer. I exercise and eat healthy and am determined to reach my goal rather than quitting two pounds shy of it in order to feel better while I am alive. To be able to walk up and down the sides of steep mountains, and to be able to take the stairs rather than the elevator, and to reduce my chances (one can never eliminate them!) of developing all the painful and debilitating conditions caused by being fat.

    I may die of a heart attack or in a car crash tomorrow. But I'll have enjoyed what life I had a lot more because for half my adult life I've maintained a healthy weight and a program of regular exercise. And for me those two are intimately connected. I've never been able to control my eating when I was not exercising regularly.
     
    #26 daniel, May 18, 2012
  7. amm0bob

    amm0bob Permanently Junior...

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    Glad to hear you're still plodding along with your reduction Bra... I too am smaller now than I was when I graduated High School... my problem is I love food... I know that...

    I also quit smoking 8 years ago and put on 80 pounds nearly as fast as a cigarette takes to burn... I didn't know how oral fixated I was and how dependant I was for something hand-to-mouth...

    Now I'm working on portions...

    Portions suck...

    That is all.
     
    #27 amm0bob, May 18, 2012
  8. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    We all love food. It's natural. What's worse, we love fat and sugar most of all. The problem is that we evolved those urges at a time when we all got a lot more exercise and food was hard to come by. The calories in fat and sugar were a great boon when they could be had. Fruits were small, with only small amounts of sugar, and animals caught for meat were extremely lean, as they, too, had a hard time finding sufficient food.

    Now we have grocery stores filled with huge, sugary fruits and corn-fattened meat, and worse yet, artificially-flavored junk foods made of almost pure fat and sugar, and we can drive our cars there and fill our shopping baskets to overflowing without expending any energy at all. We can even ride a motorized shopping cart in the store if walking the aisles would be too much exertion.

    So we are faced with a choice: We can indulge our evolved inclinations and make ourselves fat and lazy, or we can recognize that our inclinations no longer serve our best interests in an industrial world, control our appetites when food is overly abundant, and seek ways to get exercise when it's no longer needed for basic survival.

    The road to obesity is the easy one, but you pay a high price in the end. The road to health is a hard one, but it pays great dividends. Food tastes good for a moment. Being healthy feels good 24/7.

    This post is not addressed to anyone in particular. It applies to us all.
     
    #28 daniel, May 18, 2012
  9. ProximalSuns

    ProximalSuns Senior Member

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    Yes. Weight loss and exercise give excellent results in eliminating need for insulin and oral diabetes medicine. Well documented in medical field. The obesity is the cause of the diabetes.


     
    #29 ProximalSuns, May 18, 2012
  10. davesrose

    davesrose Active Member

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    It's also well documented in the medical field that obesity is not the only cause for type II diabetes.

    Daily caloric counts is not essential to weight loss. What most people recommend for keeping weight off is focusing on lifestyle. Behaviorly, people don't see as many setbacks if they focus on lifestyle change vs weighing themselves everyday.

    Weight loss: 6 strategies for success - MayoClinic.com
     
    #30 davesrose, May 18, 2012
  11. FL_Prius_Driver

    FL_Prius_Driver Senior Member

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    Then pick something other than walking during the work week. Certainly the only purpose of posting is to say something helpful, and that is all I want to do. Find something that expends calories, make it enjoyable or at least tolerable for a lifetime, involve others, and enjoy the results. I'll leave it to you to execute as you see fit. (Ha!)
     
    #31 FL_Prius_Driver, May 18, 2012
  12. ProximalSuns

    ProximalSuns Senior Member

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    No one said it was the only cause. What is medical fact is that obesity is the LEADING CAUSE of Type II diabetes in the US.

    It is the only way to know if one is burning more calories than one is taking in which is the only way to lose weight.
     
    #32 ProximalSuns, May 18, 2012
  13. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    With all due respect, counting up your calories is not the only way to lose weight. You have to eat fewer calories, but some people can limit their calories by portion control. The Weight Watcher point system is a proxy for counting calories, and is successful for those who stick to the program. My aunt has a "diet" wherein she eats exactly the same things she normally eats, but only half as much. She has been healthy all her life, and has used this system whenever her weight started to get out of hand.

    Counting up your calories is not the only way to eat fewer calories.
     
    #33 daniel, May 18, 2012
  14. ProximalSuns

    ProximalSuns Senior Member

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    Correct. One has to actually use that information to use more calories than one consumes which is the only way to lose weight.
     
    #34 ProximalSuns, May 18, 2012
  15. davesrose

    davesrose Active Member

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    #35 davesrose, May 18, 2012
  16. RobH

    RobH Senior Member

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    There is a webinar on YouTube that goes into many aspects of the biology of weight management. Dr. Park has a practice based on the neutraceutical TA-65. It lengthens telomeres, thus enabling weight loss for some people. The first 20 minutes cover the biology, while the second 20 minutes is discussion with people who have lost weight using TA-65.

    The product is currently too expensive for most people, but I think it's worth knowing about for when it or similar products come down in price. The price ranges from $2k to $8k per year, and a year is probably the minimum period worth considering. Dr. Park lost about 30 pounds with 4 years usage, without intentionally changing his diet or exercise. There's a lot more about weight than just calories in, calories out.

    His webinar:
     
    #36 RobH, May 18, 2012
  17. ProximalSuns

    ProximalSuns Senior Member

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    Lots of hokey crap on the internet. The Diet Industry is the snake oil of the 21st century.

    It is simple.

    1. Measure calories in and calories out.
    2. Burn more calories than you consume.
    3. Lose weight and keep it off.

    One of the problems with this was people would "remember" what they ate at the end of the day and not accurately record calories in. Now there are excellent smartphone apps that allow you to accurately record exact caloric intake at the time. They also allow you to accurate record that 30 minute walk you took at lunch instead of the second donut.

    Without the accurate daily log of caloric intake and output, no way to know. With accurate daily log, it gets easy...other than they motivation to exercise and the willpower not to eat.
     
    #37 ProximalSuns, May 18, 2012
  18. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    Correct. But my point is that it's what you eat and what you burn that matter. Counting calories is a useful strategy. But counting is not what matters. Eating and burning is what matters. My aunt dieted successfully without ever counting calories. She just knew how much food she normally ate, and for a diet she ate half that much, without counting the calories.

    So true. Rob is our resident promoter of everything alternative. If someone on the internet has a wacky idea, Rob will bring it to our attention and defend it heroically. Providing, of course, that there's no evidence for it and that it runs counter to everything that's actually known about the subject.

    Number 2 is necessary. Number 1 is helpful, but not necessary. For an intelligent, disciplined person like my aunt, there are other ways to know.

    The only disagreement I have with your position, is your insistence that counting calories is the only way to consume fewer calories.

    I have dieted successfully in the past by counting calories for a week, and once I knew the portion sizes that I could eat, I was able to quit counting calories, as long as I kept to the portion sizes. What I failed to do was make it a permanent lifestyle change.

    With Weight Watchers, "points" are a proxy for calories, but some foods that have calories (e.g. fresh whole fruits) are "free," and the program works. So counting calories is not necessary. It is a helpful tool, but counting calories is not the only way to eat fewer calories.
     
    #38 daniel, May 19, 2012
  19. F8L

    F8L Protecting Habitat & AG Lands

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    Great work, buddy!

    You can always try my trick. I don't eat when going into the field for fear of no restrooms. Thus I went from 183lbs just prior to my lung surgery to 162lbs last week. Body fat was 6.4% and BMI was 20.4. LOL *cries*
     
    #39 F8L, May 19, 2012
  20. ursle

    ursle Gas miser

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    :deadhorse:
    Just kidding, I agree with ProximalSuns, the only way to lose weight is to control your intake, exercise is great for the heart and limberness.
    At 17 years of age any amount of food can be ingested but after you've tripled that number... exercise isn't a good measuring device, it's got it's own rules, such as the more you exercise the more you eat.
    "The aunt" controlled"s" her intake, simple.
    Getting hung up on the term "counting calories" is frustrating this conversation, I prefer "control your intake"
    Repeat and rinse in the next thread;)
     
    #40 ursle, May 19, 2012
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