My DD who has gone to her sister's to live and look for a job was kind of the drawing card for my grandkids to come here. Now I probably won't see them much anymore. They live a few hr. away.
Carol,
You eat all the fruit you want in the morning. You have protein, veggies, soups, and salads at lunch. Then for dinner you go back to the fruit and veggies. You eat as much of it all as you want until you are full. Basically get rid of processed foods as much as possible. Kind of common sense I just can't get boxed in by too many rules. It has been hard enough breaking down all of the food rules that have gotten me into my weight mess in the first place. I haven't been feeling well this week and haven't felt like eating. Of course I try to force myself to eat because it is meal time which is ridiculous.
I don't know if it is the summer heat, but the blues seem to be upon us all. I hope we can join together and draw strength from one another. God has been on speed dial for me as of late. If you all don't mind I'll include you in my chats with him.
Sorry your not feeling well, Kay. I've been having a few days like that myself. My back and hip have been hurting but I hope they are getting better. I got really down one day because the pain was so bad and I don't like to take pain killers because I have weakened kidneys. But sometimes I just have to take one ibuprofen. I think the heat and humidity are real good appetite suppressants. ha! Yes, keep me in your prayers. Thanks.
Sorry to be absent for a few days. I go weeks and weeks without seeing anyone, then everyone I know showed up over the last 4 days. It's either feast or famine.
Carol & Kay - I hope you are both feeling better. Isn't it a pain to be in pain all the time?
Eating-wise, I've been doing better. Having the grandkids got me back into cooking real meals (been just eating snack stuff lately). In August I get to see my 2 grands that live out of town a few times (football season starting), so my outlook is getting a little better. I'm also re-reading IE books, which always gets me more in tune with my body.
Jerie--Definitely busy here. I work in recreation so it is my busiest time of year. When I get home I want to do nothing or right now I am preoccupied with my new ipod so I never make it over to 3FC. Being preoccupied with something else besides food is great for me.
Regarding IE. It is getting better and better. The past few days I have eaten only 3 meals a day and no snacks and have been satisfied. I am used to eating snacks so I am surprised this has worked. Of course it was not done purposefully. I was eating intuitively.
Oh, Shay, I like your new avatar. IE is getting better and better. I have a problem, however. I made a blouse for my son's wedding and it is a little tight requiring a diet or make a whole new blouse, I let it out as much as I could but still tight. I have a good 4 day diet that really works but the other alternative is to make another blouse and I did buy more material. I'm really discouraged because when I cut the skirt out ( I loved the material) I missed one of the panels and it was too tight, also but that wasn't the patterns fault. So I'm back to square one sewing. I'll let you know how it comes out. The wedding is Aug. 22nd but my DH's nephew gets married the Fri. before so it will be a busy month.
Carol--Thanks to your advice I know how to find free avatars and I put one specific to butterflies in my favorites so I will be switching every time I get bored. The fact that you can even make clothes at all is amazing to me. My mom used to sew when she was younger. She sold her sewing machine a few years back though because she wasn't really using it. I want to work on my crocheting skills. My mom taught me when I was young and I used to crochet blankets for my baby dolls. I want to advance my skills so I can make gifts and keep my hands busy.
Hi, ladies...I disappear from here periodically every time I get that "urge to diet", then I find myself returning when the dieting is driving me nuts and frustrating me.
It is plain to me that it's not helpful for me to try to track foods eaten, calories, carbs, etc. It just keeps me in the diet-then-dive-off-the-wagon mentality. I'm better off just to go back to eating naturally, without "rules", the way I ate when I was naturally thin growing up.
My ears really perked up in church this morning when our pastor was speaking on covetousness. He said that sometimes covetousness can be when we wish for the younger, more shapely bodies that we used to have instead of being content with the bodies that we have right now. I'd never thought of my "weight obsession" in this way, and it is an interesting perspective.
It looks like several of us are missing children and grandchildren these days.
I'm thankful for my webcam which allows me to "see" them even though they are so far away now.
Carol, thanks for posting that last article about IE. It was a great reminder for me, and certainly needed today. It sounds like you have an EXTREMELY busy August coming up. Even though they are a lot of work and preparation, I love weddings. I hope the weather cooperates for the ones you have this month.
Dieting Doesn't Work
UCLA researchers find that people who lose weight usually gain it all back — plus some.
Will you lose weight and keep it off if you diet? No, probably not, UCLA researchers report in the April issue of American Psychologist, the journal of the American Psychological Association.
"You can initially lose 5 to 10 percent of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back," said Traci Mann, UCLA associate professor of psychology and lead author of the study. "We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more. Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants, while complete weight regain was found in the majority. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people."
Up to two-thirds regain more weight
Mann and her co-authors conducted the most comprehensive and rigorous analysis of diet studies, analyzing 31 long-term studies.
"What happens to people on diets in the long run?" Mann asked. "Would they have been better off to not go on a diet at all? We decided to dig up and analyze every study that followed people on diets for two to five years. We concluded most of them would have been better off not going on the diet at all. Their weight would be pretty much the same, and their bodies would not suffer the wear and tear from losing weight and gaining it all back."
People on diets typically lose 5 to 10 percent of their starting weight in the first six months, the researchers found. However, at least one-third to two-thirds of people on diets regain more weight than they lost within four or five years, and the true number may well be significantly higher, they said.
Diets even less effective than they seem
"Although the findings reported give a bleak picture of the effectiveness of diets, there are reasons why the actual effectiveness of diets is even worse," Mann said.
Mann said that certain factors biased the diet studies to make them appear more effective than they really were. For one, many participants self-reported their weight by phone or mail rather than having their weight measured on a scale by an impartial source. Also, the studies have very low follow-up rates — eight of the studies had follow-up rates lower than 50 percent, and those who responded may not have been representative of the entire group, since people who gain back large amounts of weight are generally unlikely to show up for follow-up tests, Mann said.
Dieting may predict future weight gain
"Several studies indicate that dieting is actually a consistent predictor of future weight gain," said Janet Tomiyama, a UCLA graduate student of psychology and co-author of the study. One study found that both men and women who participated in formal weight-loss programs gained significantly more weight over a two-year period than those who had not participated in a weight-loss program, she said.
Another study, which examined a variety of lifestyle factors and their relationship to changes in weight in more than 19,000 healthy older men over a four-year period, found that "one of the best predictors of weight gain over the four years was having lost weight on a diet at some point during the years before the study started," Tomiyama said. In several studies, people in control groups who did not diet were not that much worse off — and in many cases were better off — than those who did diet, she said.
If dieting doesn't work, what does?
"Eating in moderation is a good idea for everybody, and so is regular exercise," Mann said. "That is not what we looked at in this study. Exercise may well be the key factor leading to sustained weight loss. Studies consistently find that people who reported the most exercise also had the most weight loss."
Diet studies of less than two years are too short to show whether dieters have regained the weight they lost, Mann said.
"Even when you follow dieters four years, they're still regaining weight," she said.
One study of dieting obese patients followed them for varying lengths of time. Among those who were followed for fewer than two years, 23 percent gained back more weight than they had lost, while of those who were followed for at least two years, 83 percent gained back more weight than they had lost, Mann said. One study found that 50 percent of dieters weighed more than 11 pounds over their starting weight five years after the diet, she said.
Evidence suggests that repeatedly losing and gaining weight is linked to cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and altered immune function. Mann and Tomiyama recommend that more research be conducted on the health effects of losing and gaining weight, noting that scientists do not fully understand how such weight cycling leads to adverse health effects.
Mann notes that her mother has tried different diets, and has not succeeded in keeping the weight off. "My mother has been on diets and says what we are saying is obvious," she said.
While the researchers analyzed 31 dieting studies, they have not evaluated specific diets.
Obesity an illness
Medicare raised the issue of whether obesity is an illness, deleting the words "Obesity is not considered an illness" from its coverage regulations in 2004. The move may open the door for Medicare to consider funding treatments for obesity, Mann noted.
"Diets are not effective in treating obesity," said Mann. "We are recommending that Medicare should not fund weight-loss programs as a treatment for obesity. The benefits of dieting are too small and the potential harm is too large for dieting to be recommended as a safe, effective treatment for obesity."
From 1980 to 2000, the percentage of Americans who were obese more than doubled, from 15 percent to 31 percent of the population, Mann noted.
A social psychologist, Mann, taught a UCLA graduate seminar on the psychology of eating four years ago. She and her students continued the research when the course ended. Mann's co-authors are Erika Westling, Ann-Marie Lew, Barbra Samuels and Jason Chatman.
"We asked what evidence is there that dieting works in the long term, and found that the evidence shows the opposite" Tomiyama said.
The research was partially supported by the National Institute of Mental Health.
In future research, Mann is interested in studying whether a combination of diet and exercise is more effective than exercise alone.
I truly believe that if I had never started that first diet, I wouldn't be anywhere near as big as I am today. I've been on/off/on/off various diets for a good thirty years now. Have lost and regained hundreds of pounds.
Should have just left myself alone and I probably would have drifted back down to my natural weight after my daughter was born. The thing that got me started on the diet roller coaster in the first place was an (ex) husband that hated "fat women". Never mind that I was only about 20lbs over my normal weight at that time, and wasn't even close to being "obese". Grrrr.
I am really glad I found this thread. I am reading my first book on IE, and feel a sense of relief. I am turning 30 in a few days, and decided that I didn't want to waste my life obsessing about food and body image. This past weekend I was at the Taste of my town, and I ate a lot. It was tasty, but I doubt I would have eaten so much if I didn't have an attitude of good foods vrs bad foods....
I also have a friend who is shorter and rounder than me, but she is the most confident person ever. she doesn't let her body stop her from dating, swimming, whatever, where as I won't wear shorts at all, nor will I sit with out putting somethign over my mid section.
I admit to being kind of scared. Im a pro dieter, and have been for over 10 years now. It's hard to let that go....
Welcome Optical Goddess. How did you lose the weight? Now that I have done IE for a few years it is really difficult to follow a certain diet. Maybe that's a good thing.
I lost my weight w/ weight watchers. I didn't really go to meetings or anyting, just did it on my own. I find that trying to get anything below 150 is damn near impossible, and I just feel worse about myself as I keep trying. It's just not sticking, especially when I notice that certain days I am crazy hungry and certain days I'm not hungry much at all. In the scheme of things, it all works out, but when trying to follow a certain plan, these translate into days Im freakin' hungry as all get out, or stuffing myself so I don't eat too few points.
Hi all! I noticed that even though I am eating IE, I am having trouble ordering IE at restaurants and wasting a lot of food. Yesterday we ate at a Mexican restaurant. I knew that I wanted a tamale and some rice. Instead of ordering a la cart, I ordered the dinner. It came with 3 tamales and a double order of rice since I don't eat beans. I at half the rice and 1 tamale and was satisfied. I wasted all that food and money. My mind still thinks I am going to gorge myself and that I am super hungry, but my body is sending me full signals faster. It is like I am afraid to order smaller portions because when I am done I might still be hungry... Common sense says that if I am hungry I could always order something else. Of course the "bargain" is always better if you order a dinner. I guess it isn't a bargain if half the food gets thrown away (I'm not much for taking home leftovers).
I just thought it was interesting how my mind is still battling the old thinking, but my body is starting to give me better signals about being satifsied. I have been at training this week and they have all kinds of snacks sitting out. My mind is saying, "Free snacks, get 'em while you can" My body is saying, "No, I'm not hungry" The first day I ate a snack and disregarded what my body said. I got a royal stomachache. Yesterday I listened to my body, didn't eat the junkfood, and I didn't feel deprived at all. I did actually take one of the granola bars though and stared at it. When I read the nutritional ingredients, I decided it wasn't worth eating. Later I had one of my Fiberone bars which I love.
I just can't get boxed in by too many rules. It has been hard enough breaking down all of the food rules that have gotten me into my weight mess in the first place. I haven't been feeling well this week and haven't felt like eating. Of course I try to force myself to eat because it is meal time which is ridiculous. 
