I lost 40 lbs or so when I finally started making an effort to exercise about 10 years ago, dropped 6" on my waist, got as low as 120 lbs, which I was happy with but might have been a little low even for a short arse. Maintained 125-130 for years, but having to travel a lot with work led to eating out too much and not enough exercise. Arrival of Daneel Jr has also made things a little tricky but I’m still well below my peak weight and just starting to get my focus on exercise back, also making a real effort to cut out the booze.
I was talking about a comment that now seems to have been deleted. I’m familiar with the “no sugar” stuff, but I don’t personally buy the arguments for no grains that I’ve read.
It could be that some people have chronic low-level allergic reactions to grains, but personally I was (apparently mis)diagnosed as celiac as a child, so I’ve gone through several stomach biopsies before and after high-grain diets and I’m about as confident as it’s possible to be that huge amounts of wheat and other grains do not irritate my stomach.
Avoiding refined grains, though, is solid. I do that.
My experience matches what many of you are writing. I stopped eating sugared and processed foods and cut down on carbs. I eat everything else. I exercise a few times a week. I have gotten back down to the weight I was in high school (I’m almost 50 now), and I have kept it there for years. I have more energy than I’ve ever had in my life and I feel great.
I didn’t “go on a diet”, I changed my lifestyle and plan on keeping this lifestyle for the rest of my life. It took about a year before the processed junk that is everywhere didn’t tempt me anymore.
Far be it for me to criticize a method that works for others, but I too am puzzled by the no grains thing. I eat a load of grain carbs, for most of my life grains and fat pretty much sustained me, and I’m very skinny. Maybe I have a crazy high metabolism, but honestly the times when I am forced to eat a meat heavy diet (like when staying with friends who are into it, or when in France) I feel gross. Either I’m very hungry or I feel unpleasantly full. Different strokes for different folks?
When I eat primarily non-starchy vegetables and a little meat (4 oz per meal at most), and do 20 minutes of elliptical a day I lose weight rapidly. If I add too many fats and grains and added sugar I put it back on rapidly. My problem is I never really adapt to my diet. I just put up with it, and then after a while rebel against it and put a bunch of weight back on.
Taubes talks about refined grains in ‘similar hormonal response to sugar’ terms in weight gain.
Some paleo-related diets suggest avoiding some categories of grains (mostly gluten or glutenlike-substance-containing ones) for other reasons, the most compelling one to me being strong apparent links to a giant list of autoimmune diseases via intestinal permeability or other mechanisms.
The very existance of non-celiac gluten sensitivity is a hotly debated topic in some circles, with the recent study pointing to FODMAPS instead of gluten being a more likely factor in irritable bowel syndrome being a good example.
The thing is, trying an elimination diet for 3-4 weeks usually can give anyone a decent if unscientific starting point to answering most particular ‘does X affect my Y or not’ type questions, but ain’t nobody got time for that.
[quote=“mathew, post:20, topic:33726, full:true”]In my view it’s pretty worthless to list random foods people shouldn’t eat unless you tell them why they shouldn’t eat them.[/quote]It seems to me that it is relatively easy to list any random bunch of foods and come up with superficially convincing reasons why people shouldn’t eat them. That is, after all, part of the reason why they manage to keep selling diet books, is it not?
Likewise, if you show any particular exercise plan to enough people, there will inevitably be someone who will vehemently insist that it is Completely Wrong and will only cause problems in the long term.
I adopted the No Grains approach about six months after my wife adopted her gluten-free diet (lightly mocking her for it initially). For her, going low-grain and gluten free definitely improved her irritable gut situation that she’s had the entire time we’ve been married (18 years at that point). Presumably she suffered before we were married too! I’ve never had any real gut distress during my 45 years of consuming grain. I did it for the purported weight management and diabetic prevention benefits (reduce high glycemic foods to reduce chronic insulin production and fat storage). If it didn’t work wonders for me I’d be eating grains again. While I didn’t perceive any gut distress, it was in fact there. It was just low level enough not to raise any red flags for me. I will say that since dropping grains and grain products my gut has been much more predictable and has completely eliminated those occasional times when getting to a bathroom is the most important thing in the world. I haven’t taken any antacid, pepto or immodium since.
I forgot to mention in my original post the one other thing that I have significantly reduced in my diet: High Omega-6 Oils. All my O6 fats now come from whole-foods sources, not from industrial seed oils. I really think this has also had a positive impact on my results.
Ever find the “I have zero interest in trying or learning more about [insert dietary hack that seems to work for some people], but I’ll bash it anyway as pseudosciencey placebo bullshit, and bash you in turn for having any interest in this crap” behavior when telling your story of feeling better?
I think the fact that some possibly-not-great-for-our-health things like wheat flour, added sugar and seed oils are so prevalent in our world (many of us can eat that stuff every single day since childhood and not even realize it) that even some “I’m perfectly healthy” types would, indeed, realize they feel better about something they though was just a normal part of life/aging/genetics/whatever after a few experimental weeks of less or no [thing] in their diets. Stuffy noses, bathroom problems, and who knows what else.
Or not, right? But at least you can know for sure if you try instead of forming strong beliefs based on…?
I went from 300 to 220 over the past few years, but have crept up to 230 recently. The reason really is threefold. Primarily, I have MS, which makes me absolutely exhausted. When I feel crappy I tend to make myself feel better by skipping exercise and eating pizza. I keep trying to be better about this, but it’s incredibly difficult to summon the willpower to eat better when I have trouble with the willpower to get out of bed and get to work when I’ve barely slept.
Plus so many people are trying to get fitter and failing miserably that it seems insensitive to say “Well, here’s how I got fitter and it was pretty easy…”
In my latest, ongoing, and successful attempt I noticed that combining diet changes and exercises doesn’t work out for me. I actually lose weight fairly well I limit my calorie intake, but I also gain muscle very fast when I excercise. And that’s what discouraged me - once I got in the habit of exercising, I stopped losing weight and got discouraged.
Totally agree. It’s not easy. And, for my part, I’m am completely out of shape now. Thinner, yes. Healthier, yes. But fit? No. My wife cajoled me into taking a 45 minute body-weight only workout class this morning at the gym. I am whipped. 5 years ago I could ride 100 miles on my bike without thinking twice. Not any more. I don’t even know if I ever want to get back to that level. I think that much riding was starting to take a toll on my well-being. Somewhere in the middle seems about right.
Gaining ‘lean mass’ through exercise (muscle, connective tissue and bone density) up to a point seems to be pretty health-friendly compared to fat-related weight. Or at least, losing muscle and bone mass seem to be one of the factors that make, say, the very elderly have more fragile health.
Should pure ‘losing weight, actual body tissues involved be damned’ really be your goal if you can (to borrow a phrase) look, feel and perform better even when the number in the scale is going the ‘wrong’ way sometimes?
Yes, my intellect knows that I traded fat for muscles and that this alone would be healthier for me, but my subconscious isn’t happy with me not seeing a drop in weight.
Also, I weigh enough that I couldn’t make use of that much muscle - I do have to loose weight anyway.
And yes, gaining muscles makes the exercises easier. But that’s more or less pointless, as exercises are strictly a means. I don’t gain satisfaction or even joy from physical exercise, I’m just not wired that way, it’s boring maintenance work.
