Quote:
Originally Posted by tamaralynn
I don't even bother counting calories... I count FAT. Your body naturally burns 40 grams of fat a day. Any more than that and you're going to start packing it on.
I stick to a 10 - 20 grams of fat a day diet. I EAT, I don't skip on meals... Breakfast can be a pain in the neck but to lose weight it's REALLY important!!! I eat one of those Quakers Oatmeal on the go meal bars, they are between 4 - 6 grams of fat, with a cup of skim milk (or skim chocolate milk if you like).
If you feel like snacking, eat fruit... you can eat as much as you like and not gain a pound. In fact the more you eat throughout the day (fruit and healthy wholesome meals) the more you are bound to lose... as long as you're not going over that 40 grams of fat!. You can eat fruit all day except for breakfast, lunch and dinner and still be a lb lighter the next day. Fruit = water and water helps break down food in your system faster.
Ahem...I felt like I was in a time warp to the 1990's when I read this!
Succinctly:
1) Fat is NOT THE DEVIL - we NEED fat in our diets, and more than 20 grams a day, just focus on healthy fats. If anything, sugar is the devil.
2) Contrary to the above, you CANNOT eat 'as much fruit as you like and not gain a pound'. And also, there is no such thing as a 'fat burning food'.
3) I do agree that breakfast IS important - but not with your choice of Quaker Oatmeal on the go meal bars, or ANY meal bar. Have you read the ingredients on those? Oatmeal is a great source of healthy carbs and fiber, but not when it's mixed with a bunch of crapola ingredients such as sugar (usually in the form of HFCS - High Fructose Corn Syrup) and whatever else is in those 'bars'. Keep in mind that eating sugar typically leads to wanting MORE sugar, rather than being satisfied. My typical breakfast is a bowl of hot, old-fashioned oatmeal with some cinnamon and a few blueberries (no milk) along with an eggwhite omelete - made with one whole egg + 5 whites, and a little fat-free cheddar cheese (maybe a couple of tablespoons of shredded FF cheese) as a condiment and perhaps some spinach and mushrooms added. The HEALTHY mix of carbs, protein and fat fills me up and keeps me going for hours (and BTW for those of you who say "I don't have time to make such an elaborate breakfast" - oatmeal takes like 2-3 minutes to nuke in the microwave, and an eggwhite omelette, from cracking the eggs to serving it up, takes me about 6 minutes - I'm a busy bee too!).
Back in the 1990's, I too was one of the believers that fat was bad. Of course, I didn't equate the fact that my skin was dry and itchy, my hair was thinning, and I felt run down to the fact that I had lowered my fat down to the same level (10-20 grams a day).
Not meaning to offend, but the diet you just described sounds like a combination of Susan Powter and the Beverly Hills Diet to me...
Right now my diet consists of 40% protein/40% carbs/20% fats. And it works for me - currently I'm 145 pounds and a size 4 (actually a loose size four at this point) down from my high weight of 265 back in 1990.
In the Ladies who Lift forum I started a post regarding calories, and OH YUP THEY DO COUNT. Even with healthy food - if you eat too much, you can still get fat, ya know? My post was inspired by an article in the August issue of Shape Magazine...check it out:
http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43632
And regarding losing 30 lb in 3 months - personally I'd just focus on losing at a moderate pace and MORE IMPORTANTLY keeping the weight off permanently! Do you really want to lose the weight quickly by December, only to see every single one of those pounds (plus some buddies) back in March? I don't think so! Check this out from Michael Fumento's excellent book
The Fat of the Land...
Quote:
Get Thin Slowly
...certainly it's better to stay down [in weight] once you're down. And apparently one "secret" to doing this is to go down slowly.
Wayne Callaway, M.D., notes that marketing studies conducted by one weight-loss organization found that, when dieting, most woment expect to lose between 2-3 pounds a week and most men expect between 3-5 pounds a week. If this expectation is unmet, dieters will discontinue the program by the 3rd week. Not for nothing do you hear slogans like Slim-Fast's "Give us a week and we'll take off the weight".
"To remain financially successful, commercial operations try to meet this expectation, even when they know that most of the early weight loss is from water and that a water retention cycle will eventually follow," says Callaway. "Virtually all the experts - from the Surgeon General to well-respected popular health and nutrition writers such as Jane Brody...agree that diets designed to meet these expectations always fail over the long term."
Remember that virtually any diet can cause you to lose weight; the real problem is keeping it off. With that in mind, choose a regimen that emphasizes not speed but permanency. While one often hears that no more than 2 pounds a week should be lost, it appears even this is toomuch for most people who are not extremely obese. (Obviously, the fatter you are, the less of an overall percentage of your fat 2 pounds is. So with some people, 2 or even 3 pounds might be OK.)
George Blackburn, MD, chief of surgical nutrition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, is considered one of the nation's foremost authorities on weight loss. He suggests that you begin by aiming to lose no more than 10% of body weight at the rate of no more than a pound a week. Only after maintaining that loss for 6 months and recieving permission from your physician, he says, should you attempt to take off another 10%.
In my case, after I began writing this book I initially lost 14% of my weight, which struck me as a good goal since it brought me to the weight that I was at when I joined the army at age 18. So I went a bit overboard, perhaps, but not by too much. In any case, it brought me down to a good, healthy weight. Then I went conservative and held that weight not for 6 months but for a whole year before trying to drop more. Then I said, "Congratulations, you did it. Now it's time to try and reach your ultimate goal, which is to be not only healthily slim but downright athletic." I'm not advising that for all my readers. But this was what I wanted for myself and I did it.
The main reason to aim for slow weight loss is because you are seeking to permanently change your eating habits. The calorie deficit you create should be close to what will be your permanent calorie level and certainly no lower than 1,200 to 1,300 calories. The further you go below this, the more likely you are to suffer from hunger - and nothing defeats a weight-loss regimen more quickly than hunger.
Another big advantage of slighter reductions in calories is that evidence indicates you may lose somewhat less muscle this way than with sharper calorie restrictions...
Very low-calorie diets may be necessary for those few cases where people need to lose a lot of weight quickly because of serious health problems, such as the need for surgery. Other than this, I believe they have little going for them - though all too many doctors continue to recommend them to patients. Studies comparing the two types of weight loss regimens have found that you definitely get more bang for the buck with less caloric restriction. That is, you lose more fat off your body per calories reduced with milder restriction. Consider severe energy restriction as a jackhammer while lesser restriction is more like a hammer and chisel. You can break up rock more quickly with the jackhammer, but more to your liking with the delicate instruments.
I remember when a small bottle of olive oil would go rancid before I used it all. Now I use it all without any problem. I also take 3 grams of fish oil capsules every day. 
