Anyone know a good diet program?

Post Reply New Topic

The title says it all. I'm actually really obese, weighing around 90kg to 100kg. It's starting to scare the living daylights out of me as I've heard that obese people are at risk of contracting diabetes and high blood pressure. Worse, my mom's got diabetes and my dad's got high blood pressure, which doesn't sit too well for me as I'm their son and is at risk of contracting the same stuff as them. I need to know a good diet program that I can easily follow and trust that allows me to loss weight the quickest and safest way possible. I've once tried to use this diet program called the Every Other Day Diet and I've also heard of the Fat Loss 4 Idiots Diet aswell, but I don't know if I can trust them or not. Any ideas?

A thing that works for many people is low-carbohydrates, removing breads, pastas, fried foods and other grains from your diet but allowing for meats, nuts, and fats. It is something that can help your body burn off fat quickly. It goes by names like Atkins, South Beach, and a few other titles.

Another option is low-fat where you count calories and not carbs. You tend to stay a bit hungrier on this type of diet though. Ideally you want 1500-2000 calories a day and avoid fats and oils.

Most diets will work if you stick to them, but some are harder than others depending on what foods you like.

It is a relatively simply theory. Take in less calories than you use.

This creates a caloric deficit and your body will have to utilize fat as energy.

First find your basal metabolic rate. This is how many calories you theoretically need to maintain your current weight. There are calculators for this on various websites.

Then subtract about 200 calories from that. The number you get is the amount of calories per day you need to eat to start losing weight. You should not cut your calories much more than this or your body will go into starvation mode, slow your metabolism, and metabolize muscle.

You should also start walking every day. Walk for at least 30 minutes a day, preferably an hour, at a brisk pace.

Do this consistently and you will lose weight.

Your diet should be low in carbs but don't cut them out completely or you will feel tired. Protein is important and should generally be eaten in the form of boneless, skinless baked or boiled chicken (white meat), or fish like tuna or salmon, egg whites, or low fat cottage cheese.

Green vegetables are also good as long as you don't slather them in butter.

A dinner of a potato with a bit of margarine, broccoli, and a chicken breast with seasoning is an example of a typical healthy dinner for those trying to lose weight or get in shape.

You should choose foods that are low on the glycemic index. These foods have more complex carbs, than simple carbs, so take longer for your body to digest, and don't get converted to fat so readily. This is an index diabetics should follow to avoid fluctuations in blood sugar.

Other than that, all it really takes is consistency. Everyone's metabolism is a little different. Some people have very slow metabolisms, but most people will eventually start losing weight if they keep at it. The exception is people with rare disorders like Cushings syndrome, but there is treatment for that.

You can lose about 2lbs a week safely. As long as you are shedding at least 1lb a week, I would just focus on keeping that up and not on the amount of time it's going to take you to lose all the weight, because you will eventually get there.

When I was on a vegetarian diet I lost over 60 pounds in far less than a year. Started eating meat again and then gained some weight. Now I'm back to eating vegetarian foods and I'm exercising while losing weight. It cuts out a lot of fast food and junk food that people eat. I eat lots of vegetables and different foods with protein and cook my own meals most of the time. Most of the foods I actually eat are vegan, so they are really healthy; but I'm not a vegan, but that's beside the point. Anywho, here is a website that has some really good recipes.

Link

The UltraMind Solution by Dr. Mark Hyman

When I became a vegetarian years ago, I lost a lot of weight. I had also started exercising and that helped a lot. In recent years I have regained a lot of the weight and this has caused me some health problems.

One thing I always avoided was reducing portion sizes. I grew up in a family where the portions were huge. I never felt satisfied unless I ate a fairly large amount of food. But recently I developed some disturbing symptoms (probably diabetes, but I don't know until the blood tests come back) and this prompted me to take action.

In the past few weeks, I have increased the amount of aerobic exercise I do. 20 minutes on a ski machine in the mornings after breakfast, 10 minutes in the evening after dinner. Walking a couple of miles at a brisk pace.

I have also radically reduced the size of the portions I eat. Looking at a sample menu for diabetics, I noticed that portions were usually "a cup of this" or "a half cup of that" I took this to heart and now measure out my portions fairly carefully. I usually have a cup or a little more of whatever I am eating for lunch and dinner with an apple or two throughout the day to keep me going. If I still feel hungry, I can have another measured portion later on, but only after 20 or 30 minutes.

I have also changed the kind of food I am eating. Right now I am on an Indian food kick. Most of what I am preparing for myself has a lot of lentils or chickpeas in it. I am lucky in that most of the food I crave right now has a low glycemic index. I have oatmeal for breakfast (with dried cranberries, a little brown sugar and cinnimon). Lunch and dinner might be lentil and barley soup (with a bit of carrots and onions) or Channa Dal soup or chickpea curry etc. I find the strong flavors of spicy currys quite satisfying and it somewhat makes up for the smaller portions.

The result is that over the past few weeks I have dropped enough weight that I can fit into some older pants. I'm a little concerned that I may be dropping weight a little too fast and I need to increase my eating a bit, but on the whole, I'm feeling pretty good. The thing I was most afraid of; feeling hungry, turns out to be not a problem at all. Yes, I feel slightly hungry some times, but it's nowhere near as bad as I had feared.

I think a key to successuful weight loss is to find a diet and exercise program that you can stick with. Find foods that you actually enjoy that are nutritious and low in glycemic index and measure out your portions so you know exactly how much you are eating. After you finish a portion, if you feel a little hungry, wait 20 or 30 minutes to see if you are still hungry before getting a second portion. Have an apple or peach as snacks between meals. Start walking. Once around the block to begin with, but quickly work your way up to a mile or two each day. Do some aerobic exercise every day.

Most of all, recognize that doing these things are all your choice. If you do it, that is your choice. If you do not, again, that is your choice. It is difficult and requires determination, but it is feasible. If you slip up, don't beat yourself up. Just keep making the choices that are right for you and over time, you should do okay.

Good luck.

A diet will cause you to lose weight if the calorie intake is significantly lower than the calorie expenditure. All diets use this principle, and they all work.

If you go on low carbs, your body will change it's metabolic pathways so that it obtains most of it's energy from fat - either dietary or body fat. Low fat diets supress the fat-burning pathways, which is why low carb diets generally work more effectively than low fat diets - especially for people who don't tend to metabolise carbs into energy very well.

The simplest advice is this
1) Eat enough protein. A higher protein intake curbs your appetie, and protects your muscle tissue from being eaten away instead of your fat stores.
2) Eat lots of non-starchy vegetables. You should be doing this anyway - veg fills you up & helps the digestive system work more efficiently.
3) Exercise more. Activity burns calories & builds muscle tissue, and muscle tissue burns calories.
4) Keep your alcohol intake below around 150g per week. Alcohol has around 7calories per gram, and is burned preferentially to anything else, meaning that carbs & fats get shunted towards storage instead of burning.

Do not..
1) Follow any diet where you instinctively think 'no way - that sounds crazy'. The closer a diet is to your normal eating habits, the more likely you are to stick to it.
2) Get hung up on meal frequency. Lots of diet advice from the 1980's insists that you need to eat 5 or 6 small meals a day to keep your metabolism working. This has now been proven to be absolute bobbins - your metabolism actually speeds up after you have been hungry for a while.
3) Use very low fat diets - you need at least 50g of fat daily to support your endocrine system.

I second this advice. Low carbohydrate diets have been shown to be more effective than other weight loss diets, even when the calories consumed are the same. See, for example, this video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eREuZEdM ... _embedded#

The reason is that it requires insulin to drive fat into fat cells, and carbohydrates cause a larger insulin spike than protein, while fats cause no insulin spike at all. Here's a video that explains in detail:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 661765149#

I personally recommend a high fat variation of the paleolithic diet, as it seems to have some additional health benefits that other low carb diets don't have.

If you have a smartphone (iphone or droid), you can download apps that you can use to set your daily calorie budget and track your diet and exercise. I have lost 55 lbs since January using one of these (called "Lose It!) on my iphone. It's not a gimmick and it takes consistency, but it does work.

First, here's the best piece of advice I can give you, but the one that no one wants to hear when they start trying to lose weight. You want to change your eating habits long term, rather than adopt a diet temporarily. Most people fail in the long term with diets because they lose the weight they want then go back to old habits, and they gain the weight back. Don't try to lose weight quickly for this reason - you want to change your eating habits to something you can sustain for the long term, not something you can tolerate for just a few weeks and then go back to your old habits. i.e. don't try to drop 10 lbs in one week, but try to make steady progress and lose 1-2 lbs a week.

So having said that, s others have said, its a calories consumed vs. calories burned situation...

So you want to minimize calories you are consuming and maximize how many you are burning

There are lots of ways to minimize what you are consuming but you want to do it in a way where your body still gets the nutrients that it needs. What's worked for me is to cut out refined carbs (pasta, bread, anything with flower in it basically) and sugars (with one exception which I will get to below)... eat lots of fruits (which of course do have sugar, but its "good" sugar) and vegatables and lean meats - chicken or turkey instead of beef and port. Try to stick with low fat stuff - i.e. eat reduced or non-fat cheese (by the way, non-fat Ricotta cheese is excellent when dieting - very low calorie and high in protein - its sort of plain but goes great with fruit), grill your meat instead of frying it, etc. Drink as much water as possible (rule of thumb is 1 oz. per day for every 2 lbs of body weight - i.e. if you weigh 150 lbs then 75 oz. water per day) as this helps your body metabolize fat (turn it into energy). I'd recommend cutting out pretty much every other drink except for low sodium sparkling water (in fact, try and eat low sodium amounts anyway as sodium promotes water retention which gives us more weight and that bloated appearance) and black coffee. Artificial sweetners (found in pretty much every "diet" beverage) combat weight loss, and fruit juice gives you too much of the sugar without the benefits of the fruit.

On the other end, you want to maximize the calories your body is burning. Two ways to do this (you want to do both) - a) burn calories directly and b) get your metabolism up so that your body is burning more calories even when you are sitting around idle. Exercise helps on both fronts - aerobic exercise of course burns calories directly but it also raises your metabolism for several hours after you've done it. And strength training also burns calories and has the nice side effect of building muscle mass - your body must burn more energy (calories) to maitain muscle so the more muscle you have, the better. The other thing to do is to eat lots of smaller meals instead of fewer larger meals. Why? Because when you go hours without food, your body goes into "starvation" mode and scales your metabolism back to conserve energy - its an evolution thing. Lots of smaller meals, more frequently, help keep your metabolism up and your body burning more calories.

The other thing (which is where I get a little bit confused) is you want to keep your blood sugar at the correct levels - blood sugar is like energy that is immediately available for your body to do work. When it gets too high and your body isn't at a high activity level, it gets metabolized and stored as fat. You want the opposite to be happening. The reason that things like breads and pastas are bad is that they contain a lot of "simple" carbohydrates that your body quickly breaks down into simple sugars which it then turns into fat if you aren't at a high activity level. That's why breads and pastas are "deadly" for dieters.

The other thing is not to eat late at night - again, eating gives your body energy, but if you go to bed right afterwards, guess what? Stored as fat.

Also, as far as calories consumed vs. calories burned, a fitness trainer friend of mine told me something I believe is true - about 70% of it is eating right, the other 30% is exercise. Why? Because an hour of aerobic exercise might burn 500 calories or so (depending on a lot of factors). It only takes one cheeseburger to wipe out that hour of exercise, and then some. And how much exercise can you really do in the long term? 75 minutes a day is a good goal, with 45 minutes of that being cardio.

Also, as a bench mark, a pound of body fat is about 3500 calories. A good goal is to be consuming 500-1000 calories less per day than you are burning (typical food intake is about 2000 calories per day), which translates to 1-2lbs of fat loss per week. Trying to do that all through exercise (i.e. about 500 calories per hour) is too difficult and unsustainable for most people, so that's why dieting is such an important aspect of it.

Honestly, I have found that it doesn't matter much *when* I eat, as long as I'm eating less than I'm using.

I don't like the idea of having to track everything for the rest of my life, but I've accepted that I can't just eat like a normal person; I have to think of sugary/fatty foods as being basically like crack to me. forever.

It does help to eat 4-5 small meals instead of 3 big ones (300 kCal or less).

Some substitutions are easy, too: turkey bacon tastes great, but it's only 25 kCal/slice. It takes time, but you learn how to pick and make foods that taste good but have fewer calories. One good source for tasty, low-cal substitutions and recipes:
http://www.hungry-girl.com/

I went to a nutricionist and I am on a 1900 cal diet. We were lucky to find a good nutricionist and it is working very well with me. I would recommend you the same thing but don't follow any very low calories extreme diet because it can have side effects and many people gain weight again when they lose it too fast. Your nutricionist will tell how much of each food you have to eat. Having a good diet you should practise some kind of exercise because it will make you lose weight faster. Related to what I said before it is important that with your diet you still have energy to perform your daily activities and exercise, don't follow any diet that make you weak. You don't need to practise an intense sport if you're not used to it. Just go for a stroll every day may be good. Remmeber that the fat molecules are hard to break and they only break after 30 minutes or so of exercise. Practing exercise every day will increase your metabolism and make you burn fat faster. A good nutricionist will also recommend you good eating practices like eat every three hours or so. Eating every 3 hours make your metabolism higher and also increase your satiation. If you spend too much time without eat your hunger will be higher and you will be leaning to eat unhealty food. Fruits decrease your appetite for sweets because they have their own sugar, fructose. If I've eated everything I am supposed to eat (in the diet) and I am still hungry I eat diet jelly. Well, these are the hints I collected over the years.

I used to eat the five or small meals a day-lots of nuts and vegetables.It is really hard to keep functioning and to maintain yourself on that scale. Right now I'm trying to lose weight, only 6 pounds, but having lots of soups,nuts,steamed vegetables,soy milk and tofu for protein as I am a vegan.Once a week I have my wheat free Brazilian cookie,with peanut butter and soy milk.mmm.I love food and cooking, but taking a break from processed food is a very beneficial thing for your digestive system.
Guess I am one of those few people who LOVE exercising! I get addicted to it! I do yoga and run in the morning,though one a day week I take off from running,today went walking instead and now going on a hike.

I do, and its quite simple

I've been having bladder problems again so I've been limited to yogurt,soy milk,almond milk,peanut butter...today I was so frustrated and depressed I ate way too many roasted pistachios and an entire bag of soy rice salt and vinegar chips.I've got no self control.And an iced gingerbread cliff bar.Well at least I ran for an hour and a half.

you should try running while wearing a heavy backpack (its like weighted clothes but, different and cheaper)