I agree with the idea that maybe you should try portion contol - eat the food you love, just eat less of it. That works great for some people. For others, even a little bit of some foods will lead them to overeat. It takes some trial and (a lot) of error to figure out what works for you.

One thing I try not to do is eat something only because it's healthy. I try to prepare and eat foods that I enjoy and that satisfy me. It helps that I love veggies and whole grains a LOT. For me, whole grains don't make me hungrier or anything - they satisfy. When I tried cutting out non-veggie grains I got so HUNGRY. It just depends on the person.

Also, you shouldn't only eat in ways you don't like. That's not sustainable and it'll break down. That's not what you want. You should find something you enjoy frequently and that you can tolerate when the going gets rough. Easier said than done, I know.

This is wrong is so many ways my head is spinning.

In my own personal experience, this has been what's worked for me to an extent. I am learning the beauty and importance in balance. Not just food, but all facets of life. Not visiting either extremes, but existing beautifully and peacefully in the middle. So with my food, I don't really restrict a particular food group / macronutrient (carbs, fat, protein). I balance them with each meal and I eat to the point of satisfaction....not fullness. One thing though that I HAVE given up and do not eat at all is junk food (chips, soda, processed cookies, cakes, etc). I gave it up because I believe I had a real addiction to it. Since giving it up, I have not craved it since and I enjoy the beauty in nutritious, well balanced food.

Hey Imready85---

I sent you a private message. :-)

Pauline

You started your plan this week and had a lot of good days, don't let that one binge throw you off track for weeks or years until you start again. Losing weight is about having more good days than bad, not being perfect. You are way ahead of where you started! Slip ups will happen, probably more often than you want, but getting back on track immediately will determine the outcome. Forgive yourself (if I slip up, I say, "well that was fun and now I won't be craving that for a while, time to get back on track"). One off day or meal isn't going to do damage like weeks off plan will do!

Also, there is is nothing wrong with loving food! You should work with your love of food instead of against it. You definitely don't have to give up food at all. I love food a lot more now than I ever did at my highest weight, and ironically I spend a lot more time in the kitchen. By taking time to prepare healthy meals, like an omelet for breakfast, I'm a lot more satisfied for longer vs. grabbing a pop-tart from the cabinet. I don't think it's 100% even about how eggs have protein and are the healthier choice, but about how taking the time to prepare it, season it, throw some fruit on the side, etc... makes it more satisfying all around.

Make sure your plan is a plan you enjoy. There is a good chance you can find a recipe for any food you love that will fit into your new way of eating whether it's gluten free, sugar free, low-carb, or portion controlled lower calorie options. And if you are limited on time, there are quick healthy meals to throw together like crockpot meals. It will take a lot trial and error to find the plan you like doing, and even as you lose, you'll probably still want to change things up. Forcing yourself to do a plan that makes you feel deprived, tired, like you're giving up food, etc... isn't a good idea if you want it to stick forever.

Your posts don't upset me. I think its fine that there are different things that work for different people. I think its that my posts upset you.

Ok hunger: A little bit of hunger is fine. A lot of hunger will bring you undone. There are physiological reasons for it. And i'm not even talking about the type of hunger that people in real famine experience. Hunger is a sign. Its a sing that you should eat.

Genuine hunger (not boredom hunger) is telling you that your blood supply of energy has run out and your are now resorting to the tissues for energy. That is good. But push that too long and your body will use up the supply of glycogen in your muscles. The feeling of this is intense hunger. When you get to that stage, you will crash. Crashing in dieters feels like a ravenous appetite, no energy, and just all round not good. It makes us run for sugars.

When people are eating low low calories. They are much closer to the crash zone than ordinary people who are not on a diet. Long distance athletes have this issue and triathletes call it the boink. They try to avoid it at all costs because their race is over if they get to that stage. and its quite a dangerous stage for athletes. But because their muscles are so big they carry a lot more energy in their muscles and those of us on a diet. Those of us on a diet who do not have large muscles do not store a lot of energy in our muscles and the body doesn't rush to break down fat at that stage. It goes for muscle tissue itself. The stage at which the body burns fat is when its drawing on the energy in our muscles tissues. that's before the boink. That's when we might experience a little bit of hunger. If your hunger is intense as it can be at the end of the day if you've been to work, then you may be at the end of your muscle tissue energy stores.

When you crash, you feel a bit crazy, you need food fast and people tend to rush for the chocolate bar and things of that kind because that's the quickest way to recover.

So what i advocate is avoiding getting to that point. This is why i suggest only lowering calories to a modest point and keeping meals close together during the day when you are more active. Then in the evening when we are not active, we are not likely to run out of our bodies energy stores.

Its because of this process that people who go to the gym and do other sorts of intense exercise whilst on a diet are advised to eat some protein and carbs at the end of it.

But for people who are overeating a lot, especially of refined carbs, i.e. binging, (because they are more concentrated than say vegetables and other whole foods), will experience insulin spikes and this triggers a binge. So they don't even get to the boink before experiencing a similar sensation. And this is a vicious cycle. To get over it you need either portion control which takes more effort, or just eliminate the refined carbs and then its easier to eat a balanced meal and get things back into some balance.


Its great that IE works for you and whoever else it works for. I am just saying it didn't work for me.

Huh????

No Pattience your posts don't upset me at all. It's posts that demonized whole food groups that are so upsetting because they are terrifying and unecessary. telling everyone that carbs kill people, that carbs are as bad as cigarettes... well frankly it's very upsetting and as someone who can identify with someone like the OP who is feeling helpless it's the last thing I wanted to hear because it promises a lot and delivers it to very few that it works for. There are options for everyone. I'm not pushing IE on anyone, only that I think hunger can be a lifeline but we re too busy trying to cover it up.

The bugger off was to me to not over post here. The low carb Paleo Primal arguments go well for the last two, humans did not evolve to eat grains. So they and I don't eat grains.

And all three find refined carbs and sugar to be the most common reason for being overweight and sick. So even small or controlled amounts of stuff that makes you sick are not the way to go. Why make your body work so hard to detox? Give it good, whole food, and watch it and you thrive.

Oh well i'm glad it wasn't to me then. But Geo, its not true that our bodies are made to avoid grains. Scientists have evidence that early man ate grains. We wouldn't have become grain eaters if we could not obtain nutrients from them.

Secondly paleo man did not live very long either remember, so we don't have evidence that they would have lived long healthy lives and did not suffer diseases like cancer and heart disease, if they overate according to the paleo diet. Paleo man did not over eat because there was a never much of a food surplus. Paleo man was very slim. Of course we know that paleo man didn't die because of his paleo diet. They died in childbirth, of parasites from some meat, and infections mostly, as well as untreated congenital defects and diseases. Of course some would have died from starvation too when food was scarce. And some would have died form injuries on hunts and fights.

Lets take dogs as an example. We think of dogs as meat eaters. Dogs prefer meat but they also can survive on other types of food and in fact most processed dog food is not pure meat. In india, most stray dogs don't get any meat to eat - and there are a lot of stray dogs in the cities. They survive on the food that public gives them which is everything humans eat which over there is not often meat in many parts.

But here in the west are many overweight dogs because dogs will eat everything that anyone will give them. Their appetite never seems to be satisfied (Just like a lot of us). And some owners feed their dogs too much food. That's why there are fat dogs.

Our bodies seem to have evolved to survive low calorie diets and that's why we don't do well when we overeat. Humans are not actually well adapted to the world we live in. We are not well adapted to wealth where we can live sedentary lives and eat a lot. But these sedentary and wealthy lives are a recent addition to life on the planet. Our bodies cannot compensate effectively. So we get overweight. We are trying to deal with it by using intelligence to learn more about these things so we can take effective measures. INtelligence on its own is not enough either. Unfortunately, we have not come up with a magic pill. All weight loss efforts require a degree of effort.

I do find what i'm doing quite easy but that's not to say there is no effort involved.

When you get your weight down to the healthy weight range, i think you will find you will have to apply effort as well. It may be quite easy now for you but it won't always be this way.

Maintain its not grains that are the problem. For people who suffer from the insulin spikes, just quitting refined sugar alone will stop that problem and make the weight loss easier. The binge tendency will still be there but not as a regular part of the day. For someone on a well balanced diet who is not triggered by sweets, It will mainly only be with emotional upsets that one would be at risk of a binge. And that's because of how our brain chemistry works in response to these sorts of stimuli. i.e. it causes seratonin falls. FAlls in seratonin, according to the article i keep referring to, causes us to go for carbs.

This is why i keep saying manage your moods.

But look we all think its fine if you want to do what you are doing for yourself. And you are happy with it. We just don't think your arguments are convincing. We don't think your approach offers the best solution.


And we haven't even got onto the environmental aspects of the issue. This planet could not sustain the current population if we all avoided grains. As it is, many of us think we are heading to a major crisis.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cr.../#.Uy4_-Vx-_Hj

Low carb made me sick- I had to go to urgent care for female bleeding issues. It's not for everybody. I've said this before and I'll say it again- nobody has gotten fat by eating boiled wheat berries. The problem with low carbers is that they treat all carbs alike- a potato is the equivalent of a candy bar. It's a reductive way to think about human nutrition and it's actually symbolic of what has gone wrong in the fields of nutrition research. You can't just talk about vitamin A vs. polysaccharides vs. lycopene instead of liver, potatoes, and tomatoes. I agree that eating whole foods is the best thing you can do for your body- but eating bacon, butter, and cheese as dietary staples isn't healthful and that's what a lot of low carbers do.

Actually, part of dogs' adaptation to domestication is a genetic mutation that allows them to digest carbs. Prescription dog food for pancreatitis (low fat) is mostly carbohydrate.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...ed-wolves-dogs

Humans seem pretty capable of digesting carbohydrates. It's the fuel that we burn preferentially.

But that doesn't mean that grains are the ideal health food for today's lifestyle and long lifespan. Grains can add a lot of omega-6 fats and can throw off the healthy balance of omega-6 to omega-3 in humans. Grain-fed beef (and dairy products), chicken, and farmed fish can also contribute to an imbalance.

Aside from the the omega balance, is the issue of whether starchy carbs (including grains) can trigger hunger. For now, I am going to disregard the rationale (evolution-based arguments) and physiological science (insulin/leptin), which I think is not yet cast in stone...

In my own case, I do try to include a small serving (a few heaping tablespoons) of nutrition-dense grains (e.g. black rice) in some of my meals but I know that if I include too much I will trigger my hunger rather than satisfy it.

Please stop denying that my personal experience exists. My problem is not with sweets. (Sweets might also be a problem for me, but they have not been a significant part of my life for a very long time, with the exception of my 2 squares of dark chili choc at the end of a meal, which are not a problem for me).

Yoyoma, i will leave the first part of your post til later when i've had more time to digest it.

The second part of the post.
I don't know anything about you so i don't know how i can respond to that. And it probably wouldn't be seen as acceptable to ask enough questions to get to the bottom of your story. So another reason i can't respond.

If people are going to defend the avoidance of grains, then they should put forward a convincing argument. "i can't eat grains because they make me fat" is not any kind of argument. Its just an assertion that does nothing to change my mind. But if someone somewhere has made a very good case against then, then maybe you could share that. Because blimey, i've never seen one.

The weight of scientific opinion is against the paleo diet. So what's next?

[I will probably modify this post as i learn more this evening]

From wikipeida sources of omega 6 fatty acids.

That should just about take care of the omega 6 argument. I mean if you give up grains for that reason, shouldn't you also give up eggs, poultry, nuts, avocados, all those oils? I eat a few of these things, including a lot of spaghetti, and i still eat it on my diet, though less in the last week or two because i replaced a fair bit of it with beans to get more protein.

I also just read up again on the sources of omega 3. On the Heart Foundation website i see its not that hard to increase your intake for omega 3. They suggest soy and linseed wholegrain bread, walnuts and and another nut, a few vegetables, canola oil margarine etc. And that's not even to mention fish and beef. So basically if you are watching, it the omega 6 argument has no legs as a reason for not eating grains.

Well if it does trigger your hunger, I won't deny that's possible. But how much are we talking about and what do you do? Do you keeping eating plain rice? does anyone eat a loaf of plain bread? Yes i can eat a whole packet of raisin bread (which is full of sugar) but not wholegrain bread, not even a loaf of sliced white bread, not bowl after bowl of white rice, or plain adulterated spaghetti. But give me ice-cream, no need to add syrup, i can eat 2litres of it. I can stuff myself silly on peanuts, almonds, cheese but i'm not suggesting one has to quit eating these foods. I tried it before. It wasn't a good idea. Food became too uninteresting and too difficult to make tasty. Not impossible but a lot more work.

I recommend quitting sweets because they have no nutritional value. Grains do offer nutritional value. They are useful foods. But if you don't wish to eat them, you don't have to. And i have found they can be eaten in moderation. I'm sorry you haven't been able to do that.

Humans have been eating grains for over 100,000 years.