New to a diet any advice please..?

That's the idea. However, you don't have to make such a drastic change.
Just
reduce the portions for a week and see how things are going. If you're not
losing weight, then reduce some more. And so on.
Also be careful with the protein issue

Yes I have now reconsidered the protein content of my diet
I do at times have a tendancy to go for extremes and I recognise that for me
it is either feast or famine. That issue will need addressing - I hesitate
to write it will be done "at stage two"...!!!

Have you ever done a diet before? If you haven't, and if you still have
good
muscles under the fat, you might be among the lucky overweight people who
still have a high metabolism. I mean, you gain weight "just" because you
eat
a *lot*, without compounding that with having your body on "economy" mode.
This means that you *might* be able to lose weight just by eating *normal*
sized portions.

No I have never needed to diet upto certain health issues a few years ago
where my lifestyle changed so much that food became too much of a comfort
rather than just a means to live, as such.

The problem with this approach is the transition from 1 to 2. As you lose
weight, you will need less and less calories to keep your weight. If
overdo
1, you will have much lowered needs at your target weight. Besides,
psychologically, it's still the idea that "the diet is a medication that
you
only have to do for a little while, even if it's unpleasant, and it will
be
better at target weight". Hence, the idea you have to do 1 as fast as
possible. There are risks, like getting further cut from your feelings
(hunger, satiety) or even triggering eating disorders.
I still believe it's better to start with 2, and let your weight go down
to
your ideal weight. The ideal curve would be to start eating just what you
will need to maintain your ideal weight - then you would not even need to
stabilize, it would just happen on its own.

I understand the sense in the above but not being sensible has got me where
I am and whilst I do not have a great deal of patience I realise that my
initial approach might not be the best for a long term objective.

That's not an emergency. An emergency is : "if I don't lose weight within
two months, I'm going to die".
You have to stop thinking in magical number. There is really nothing
special
about your birthday, if you reach your ideal weight one month before or
after, nothing really special will happen. Likewise, there is no "ideal
weight". At least, we can't compute that and come up with a number that
will
be your ideal weight. Your ideal weight will be :
- whatever keeps you healthy.

I understand - and thankyou for putting it into perspective. For many years
my work and lifestyle was guided and influenced by goals and objectives that
were attained or modified to suit as needed. Finding myself in a position of
no longer having that control in the roles that I had established as being
important to me must have influenced the way that I then turned to food and
totally absolved myself of taking responsibility of any other sort of
control - a sort of safety net I suppose.

Maybe it would be worth it to try
for a psychological approach, at least to help you along the way.

I recognised this and the first approach was several months with a cognitive
psychiatrist. Several months later and a cocktail of SSRI's and anti
depressants forced me to re examine just what little control that I had in
my situation. Coming off the SSRI's were a major issue in themselves and
whilst I do feel a counselling approach does have a value I beleieve that
drugs do not, for me anyway.

I am learning to take responsibility back and have now found the courage to
address my weight.

Thanks for your help

Bob

"Bob" wrote in message ws.com...
Hi People

A little bit about me....

43 Year old male unemployed since having numerous back surgery operations
and over the last few years have put on weight upto 16st 9lbs. Previously I
have never been out of work.

Typical food in a day...

Breakfast
6 weetabix
2 toasts

I can only say what has worked for me these past 3 months . . .

First, I cut the carbs (sugar and starch) down drastically, to the
bare minimum. Unless you've been very active immediately before
eating, carbs are just empty calories that WILL go to fat, AND make
you hungrier in the process.

I probably eat 30% of my calories as carbs, and I've been very happy
with this WOE, as even though I'm maintaining a 1000 kcal/day calorie
deficit, I am a lot LESS hungry than I was before. I've NEVER had a
growling stomach on this diet! Amazing!

Second, fructose is bad for you, and fruits are expensive. I
personally think a good A,C,E antioxidant vitamin taken with a meal is
a better deal (but I could be wrong here, since most vitamin pills
just get peed out). While it's tough to reach the 50g/day metabolic
limit (apparently any more than this and your liver runs out of juice
and just converts fructose to triglycerides and cholesterol) by eating
just fruit, fruits are also wonderful little sugar bombs that you
really don't need in a "balanced" 30% carb-30% fat -30% protein diet.

Third, the "balanced diet" thing. I've found great success not
avoiding fat in my daily diet. Fat in moderation is great -- I think
it really helps keep the body from getting distressed by the lack of
calories that are coming in. Plus things with fat taste REALLY good.

Fourth, don't go on a crash diet. I'm breaking this rule since I'm
shooting to lose ~50 lbs over 5 months, and I think everything over
1lb/week is a crash diet (but my target rate of 2 lbs/week is
considered the maximum safe rate loss, so it's not so bad). If you are
starving yourself you are doing something VERY VERY wrong.

Fifth. Eat smaller portions more often. Don't eat more than you are
consuming with exercise and your base metabolism. Eg. don't load up on
calories at night if you're just going to veg until morning.

Sixth, take a balanced regime of multivitamins. My regime, which I
make no claims as to being good, is:

Morning meal: Centrum-style full multivitamin with everything
Lunch meal: A,C,E antioxidants
Dinner meal: Omega 3-6-9 unsaturated fats pill and a B-complex
vitamin.

Altogether I'm taking in 400% or so for most vitamins. I'm hoping this
counter-acts the lost-in-urine effect.

Lots of additional fruit and pure fruit juice (around 1ltr)

No wonder you're so hungry. The sucrose and fructose in this is
overloading your system! Kill the fruit, and especially kill the
juice. It's still sugar water.

in the day and some chocolate.

WTF? This isn't a diet. If you want to lose weight, get serious and
prove to yourself that you don't need chocolate to live. It's all
mental in the end, and everything unnutritious you put into your mouth
is just pushing your goal further out.

I have lost just over 7lbs in weight in that week.

7lbs of something. Most likely water, as your body is going, "WTF is
happening?"

Now I am very happy with the weight loss but how the heck do you.....

one week does not a trend make. Wait a month. 7lbs/month is a very
sustainable trend.

1. Keep focussed and not CONTINUOUSLY think about food.
2. Deal with hunger pangs and groans and gurgles.

drop your sugar and starch intake, eat more protein and unsaturated
fat.

3. Tell the difference between genuine hunger and just my usual craving...?

your body is telling you, hey how about some real food?

Also what would be my ideal weight...? I am 6ft tall and have a large
frame - 44" chest 36" waist.

36" waist is pretty good, I'm 6' 1" and 40", and hope to get back
down to 34". 233lbs was my peak too, and it's taken me 10 weeks to get
down to 210, and dropped from 44" to 40". My goal is 180, but I think
190 would be about right for you.

"Bob" wrote in message ws.com...
Hi People

couple more things:

Drink at least 1/2 gallon (64-oz) of water a day. Drink more. Drink as
much as you can. Fat loss requires water. Water through the kidneys
cleans out the gunk from fat burning.

One trick I use is eating 1oz (~28 nuts) of smokehouse almonds for
lunch. Gives me 200 kcal of protein and unsaturated fat, but more
importantly water tastes really good with the flavoring.

Also, measure your waist with a tape measure, not pants. I could
easily fit into 40" pants but the tape measure said 44" when I started
this diet thing.

"Heywood Mogroot" wrote in message
om...
First, I cut the carbs (sugar and starch) down drastically, to the
bare minimum. Unless you've been very active immediately before
eating, carbs are just empty calories that WILL go to fat, AND make
you hungrier in the process.

This is a very YMMV thing. Converting your carbs to fat is not really a
problem, as long as you have a calorie deficit somewhere, the fat will
eventually get burnt - and you will have lost some more energy through the
carb-fat-carb conversions. Actually, calorie intake can be considered on a
weekly basis rather than daily. Not all carbs are empty calories, some come
with some vitamins (B group comes to mind) and fibers. The weetabix are
pretty good carbs for instance (if you take only a couple a day!).
As for carbs making you hungrier, this depends on the people. If you do not
have reactive hypoglycemia (or insulino resistance or whatever), no, they
won't. If you do, it's rather a matter of slowing down the carbs as much as
possible, by always associating them with fat, proteins or fibers and by
avoiding sugars (especially in juices).
If you're trully overweight (ie, your body also "think" its overweight and
that it should lose weight) and if you do a reasonnable diet, your body will
tolerate a reasonnable calorie deficit before triggering the hunger.

Second, fructose is bad for you, and fruits are expensive. I
personally think a good A,C,E antioxidant vitamin taken with a meal is
a better deal (but I could be wrong here, since most vitamin pills
just get peed out).

You won't find vitamins A and E in fruits anyway, they're fat soluble
vitamin. Anyway, multi-vitamins are nice, but I still perceive them as
inferior to the real deal, if only because you can't eat multivitamins all
your life.
Fructose is bad for you if you load yourself with it. In a balanced diet,
this should not happen. In normal circumstances, fructose has the large
advantage of being a slow sugar (glycemic index in the 25 range) which is
often associated with fibers (especially soluble ones, which seem to be the
best) in fruits. In my experience, fruits provide slow release carbs, which
are very nice when exercising. Though not all fruits are equal; bananas work
great to recover *after* the exercise, but they're just awful in the middle
of it (sugar is too fast, triggers a rollercoaster), apples worked much
better for that.
Fruits are interesting food, they do come with vitamins and oligo-elements,
very important fibers (that will slow down carbs) and they're not too high
calorie. But as usual, moderation in the key.

While it's tough to reach the 50g/day metabolic
limit (apparently any more than this and your liver runs out of juice
and just converts fructose to triglycerides and cholesterol) by eating
just fruit, fruits are also wonderful little sugar bombs that you
really don't need in a "balanced" 30% carb-30% fat -30% protein diet.

I beg to differ. In my experience, fruits in moderation are just slow
release carbs. They're slower than a lot of so-called slow carbs (like many
cereals).

Third, the "balanced diet" thing. I've found great success not
avoiding fat in my daily diet. Fat in moderation is great -- I think
it really helps keep the body from getting distressed by the lack of
calories that are coming in. Plus things with fat taste REALLY good.

Completely agreed there. Low fat is not a good thing. There is a lot of
stuff you *need* in fats : calcium&vitamin D (you don't want to cut these
when you have back problems), vitamins A&E, omega-3-6-9... Fats are also the
best thing, along with fibers, to slow down carbs. It seems Bob is going a
bit too low fat
The *only* fat you can totally cut without problem are trans fats (the ones
in margarine, most industrial food, fast foods...), just get rid of those as
much as you can, they're just plain evil. Other than that, I think a balance
between the three kinds of fats is good, for instance with olive oil
(monounsaturated, can be heated fine), butter (saturated) and colza (canola)
or walnut oil (polyunsaturated, omega-3, do not heat and keep in the
fridge). If you do use canola, buy this one in an organic shop, you want it
cold extracted and *not* deodorized (otherwise, you get close to no omegas
and trans fats instead). Same applies to olive oil, but usually you can find
good quality one in regular supermarkets.
Fat fish are also something you should not avoid, the fats there are very
healthy.

Fifth. Eat smaller portions more often. Don't eat more than you are
consuming with exercise and your base metabolism. Eg. don't load up on
calories at night if you're just going to veg until morning.

More meals in smaller portions is always a good idea, and pretty easy to do
(just split breakfast in two meals). I'm not so sure about not loading up at
night, again, as long as there is a calorie deficit somewhere, the fat will
eventually burn. Late dinner (9-10pm) has always been my main meal and has
remained so, and this doesn't seem to slow down weight loss. But as a
result, I do eat very small breakfasts, *1* weetabix is about all I can eat,
my definition of a huge breakfast is a *small* cup of oatmeal with a kiwi -
and I'm likely not to get hungry again until 2pm.

Sixth, take a balanced regime of multivitamins. My regime, which I
make no claims as to being good, is:
Morning meal: Centrum-style full multivitamin with everything
Lunch meal: A,C,E antioxidants
Dinner meal: Omega 3-6-9 unsaturated fats pill and a B-complex
vitamin.

Unless really overdone, multivitamins can not hurt, though it seems these
vitamins are still inferior to the ones you get in your food. Some vitamins
and minerals are bad in large quantity though.
What's the logic behind getting omega-6 though? Usually, we already get *too
much* of these through our diet (butter, animal fats, most oils), and this
unbalances the equilibrium between -3 and -6 (they're antaganonists). It's
also possible to overdo it, too many omega-3 are unhealthy. I don't think
you need pills, canola oil can bring plenty of omega-3 (couple of spoons a
day is above your daily needs), walnut oil has the ideal 1:5 ratio
between -3 and -6 already, and fat fish can bring a lot of these.

Lots of additional fruit and pure fruit juice (around 1ltr)

No wonder you're so hungry. The sucrose and fructose in this is
overloading your system! Kill the fruit, and especially kill the
juice. It's still sugar water.

Semi-agreed. That's a *lot* of fruit juice. And fruit juice is the fruits
minus the good things (less fibers, less vitamins, much faster carbs)... If
you drink low quality fruit juice, you're also getting plenty of added
sugars. Just eat real fruits in moderate quantities instead, that's a lot
healthier and they don't raise hunger like juices do.

in the day and some chocolate.

WTF? This isn't a diet. If you want to lose weight, get serious and
prove to yourself that you don't need chocolate to live. It's all
mental in the end, and everything unnutritious you put into your mouth
is just pushing your goal further out.

Chocolate is not unnutritious, it has some potassium, iron, magnesium,
calcium, vitamins A,B and E. It's high in saturated fats, but it doesn't
raise cholesterol much, it's high in polyphenols (antioxydants, they can
lower VLDL cholesterol). The high fat content also make it a rather
medium-slow carb. So, that's not really empty food. Sure, you do not *need*
chocolate to live. But it's still a very comforting food, that is not
unhealthy. It doesn't make you fat either, unless you eat too much of it. I
have been eating chocolate as part of my diet, and this doesn't slow down
weight low as far as I can tell. Even when I was doing appetite control
exercises with my nutritionnist (that's eating 4oz of chocolate instead of
lunch for 4 days), if I remember correctly, I lost 5lbs that week.
That's just another item where moderation applies - 1/2oz of chocolate a day
is fine (just replace a fat free yogourt with that much chocolate, that's
about the same calories), 10oz is not. Also, I'm talking about *real*
chocolate, not we put together sugar-and-trans-fat-and-some-chocolate-flavor
bar. Just read the content, if there is any other kind of fat other than
pure cocoa fat, it's not real chocolate (also watch for cocoa content,
should be at least 45%).

"Lictor" wrote in message ...
"Heywood Mogroot" wrote in message
om...
First, I cut the carbs (sugar and starch) down drastically, to the
bare minimum. Unless you've been very active immediately before
eating, carbs are just empty calories that WILL go to fat, AND make
you hungrier in the process.

This is a very YMMV thing.

agreed. I overstate the case against carbs.

Converting your carbs to fat is not really a
problem, as long as you have a calorie deficit somewhere, the fat will
eventually get burnt - and you will have lost some more energy through the
carb-fat-carb conversions. Actually, calorie intake can be considered on a
weekly basis rather than daily. Not all carbs are empty calories, some come
with some vitamins (B group comes to mind) and fibers.

When I speak of carbs, I'm referring to processed carbs.

The weetabix are
pretty good carbs for instance (if you take only a couple a day!).
As for carbs making you hungrier, this depends on the people. If you do not
have reactive hypoglycemia (or insulino resistance or whatever), no, they
won't. If you do, it's rather a matter of slowing down the carbs as much as
possible, by always associating them with fat, proteins or fibers and by
avoiding sugars (especially in juices).

yeah. I'd eat some pasta and a 16oz Mt Dew for lunch, and it would put
be to sleep 2hrs later...

Second, fructose is bad for you, and fruits are expensive. I
personally think a good A,C,E antioxidant vitamin taken with a meal is
a better deal (but I could be wrong here, since most vitamin pills
just get peed out).

You won't find vitamins A and E in fruits anyway, they're fat soluble
vitamin. Anyway, multi-vitamins are nice, but I still perceive them as
inferior to the real deal, if only because you can't eat multivitamins all
your life.

Why not?

While it's tough to reach the 50g/day metabolic
limit (apparently any more than this and your liver runs out of juice
and just converts fructose to triglycerides and cholesterol) by eating
just fruit, fruits are also wonderful little sugar bombs that you
really don't need in a "balanced" 30% carb-30% fat -30% protein diet.

I beg to differ. In my experience, fruits in moderation are just slow
release carbs. They're slower than a lot of so-called slow carbs (like many
cereals).

OK, point taken. I've never eaten enough fruit to bonk on them, so
again I am overstating the case.

Fifth. Eat smaller portions more often. Don't eat more than you are
consuming with exercise and your base metabolism. Eg. don't load up on
calories at night if you're just going to veg until morning.

More meals in smaller portions is always a good idea, and pretty easy to do
(just split breakfast in two meals). I'm not so sure about not loading up at
night, again, as long as there is a calorie deficit somewhere, the fat will
eventually burn. Late dinner (9-10pm) has always been my main meal and has
remained so, and this doesn't seem to slow down weight loss. But as a
result, I do eat very small breakfasts, *1* weetabix is about all I can eat,
my definition of a huge breakfast is a *small* cup of oatmeal with a kiwi -
and I'm likely not to get hungry again until 2pm.

I'm just going on what I've read. I guess the main thing is to not
over-satiate yourself at night, since you aren't going to be doing
anything with those carbs except processing them into fat cells.

Unless really overdone, multivitamins can not hurt, though it seems these
vitamins are still inferior to the ones you get in your food. Some vitamins
and minerals are bad in large quantity though.
What's the logic behind getting omega-6 though? Usually, we already get *too
much* of these through our diet (butter, animal fats, most oils), and this
unbalances the equilibrium between -3 and -6 (they're antaganonists). It's
also possible to overdo it, too many omega-3 are unhealthy. I don't think
you need pills, canola oil can bring plenty of omega-3 (couple of spoons a
day is above your daily needs), walnut oil has the ideal 1:5 ratio
between -3 and -6 already, and fat fish can bring a lot of these.

Thanks for the info. ~1500kcal/day doesn't leave a lot of room for
fats, so I'm taking a 3-6-9 flax/fish capsule daily. I couldn't find a
3-9 capsule, so I just got the 3-6-9.

in the day and some chocolate.

WTF? This isn't a diet. If you want to lose weight, get serious and
prove to yourself that you don't need chocolate to live. It's all
mental in the end, and everything unnutritious you put into your mouth
is just pushing your goal further out.

Chocolate is not unnutritious, it has some potassium, iron, magnesium,
calcium, vitamins A,B and E. It's high in saturated fats, but it doesn't
raise cholesterol much, it's high in polyphenols (antioxydants, they can
lower VLDL cholesterol). The high fat content also make it a rather
medium-slow carb. So, that's not really empty food. Sure, you do not *need*
chocolate to live. But it's still a very comforting food, that is not
unhealthy. It doesn't make you fat either, unless you eat too much of it. I
have been eating chocolate as part of my diet, and this doesn't slow down
weight low as far as I can tell. Even when I was doing appetite control
exercises with my nutritionnist (that's eating 4oz of chocolate instead of
lunch for 4 days), if I remember correctly, I lost 5lbs that week.
That's just another item where moderation applies - 1/2oz of chocolate a day
is fine (just replace a fat free yogourt with that much chocolate, that's
about the same calories), 10oz is not. Also, I'm talking about *real*
chocolate, not we put together sugar-and-trans-fat-and-some-chocolate-flavor
bar. Just read the content, if there is any other kind of fat other than
pure cocoa fat, it's not real chocolate (also watch for cocoa content,
should be at least 45%).

I've been thinking of substituting Kozy Shack vanilla pudding instead
of vanilla yoghurt for breakfast now, so I guess I shouldn't rant
against chocolate.

I've just cut out relatively empty feel-good snacks from my diet
regimen, since these add up and with just 1500 kcal/day I've got to
make every calorie count.

Drink at least 1/2 gallon (64-oz) of water a day. Drink more. Drink as
much as you can. Fat loss requires water. Water through the kidneys
cleans out the gunk from fat burning.

ah again I was not aware of that - thankyou.

One trick I use is eating 1oz (~28 nuts) of smokehouse almonds for
lunch. Gives me 200 kcal of protein and unsaturated fat, but more
importantly water tastes really good with the flavoring.

Interesting as again I undervalued the importance of protein in my diet.

Also, measure your waist with a tape measure, not pants. I could
easily fit into 40" pants but the tape measure said 44" when I started
this diet thing.

hangs head in shame As I will not "feel" too comfortable in using a tape
measure at this moment in time. I have been a great supporter of the Ostrich
syndrome of burying my head in the sand and ignoring the too obvious...!!!!!
It is only now that I feel able to take responsibility in sorting out my
shape.

Thank you very much for your help

Bob

"Bob" wrote in message
s.com...

Also, measure your waist with a tape measure, not pants. I could
easily fit into 40" pants but the tape measure said 44" when I started
this diet thing.

hangs head in shame As I will not "feel" too comfortable in using a
tape
measure at this moment in time. I have been a great supporter of the
Ostrich
syndrome of burying my head in the sand and ignoring the too
obvious...!!!!!
It is only now that I feel able to take responsibility in sorting out my
shape.


Get your head out of the sand and grab that measuring tape You might
be making progress and not know it !!

You could also use a pair of pants as your reference point. I have some
jeans and know when they become a little too snug around the waist that
it's time to cut back on the calories.

Beverly


Thank you very much for your help

Bob

"Bob" wrote in message
s.com...
hangs head in shame As I will not "feel" too comfortable in using a tape
measure at this moment in time.

Well, it seems you do use a scale, so why not a tape? A tape actually gives
information that is as important as your weight. If you do exercise a lot,
it's perfectly possible to *gain* weight while losing fat. With a scale, you
will just freak out and wonder what the hell is going on. With a tape, you
will notice the lost centimeters and know what is going on. As far as your
look is concerned, the centimeters are way more important than your weight.

On 4/28/2004 9:49 AM, Lictor wrote:
"Bob" wrote in message
s.com...

hangs head in shame As I will not "feel" too comfortable in using a tape
measure at this moment in time.


Well, it seems you do use a scale, so why not a tape? A tape actually gives
information that is as important as your weight. If you do exercise a lot,
it's perfectly possible to *gain* weight while losing fat. With a scale, you
will just freak out and wonder what the hell is going on. With a tape, you
will notice the lost centimeters and know what is going on. As far as your
look is concerned, the centimeters are way more important than your weight.


I don't use a tape measure. I can tell whether or not my close fit or
are tighter or looser just fine, thanks. I lost about 80 pounds without
ever using a tape measure. I simply don't feel that it is necessary.
It is tool and if you find it to be useful, great. I just see no reason
to attempt to force someone into using it if they don't want to.

--
jmk in NC

jmk wrote in message ...
On 4/28/2004 9:49 AM, Lictor wrote:
"Bob" wrote in message
s.com...

hangs head in shame As I will not "feel" too comfortable in using a tape
measure at this moment in time.


Well, it seems you do use a scale, so why not a tape? A tape actually gives
information that is as important as your weight. If you do exercise a lot,
it's perfectly possible to *gain* weight while losing fat. With a scale, you
will just freak out and wonder what the hell is going on. With a tape, you
will notice the lost centimeters and know what is going on. As far as your
look is concerned, the centimeters are way more important than your weight.


I don't use a tape measure. I can tell whether or not my close fit or
are tighter or looser just fine, thanks. I lost about 80 pounds without
ever using a tape measure. I simply don't feel that it is necessary.
It is tool and if you find it to be useful, great. I just see no reason
to attempt to force someone into using it if they don't want to.

Pants are great as a relative measure, but for absolute measures (eg
"36 inch waist") they lie.