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What commonly given MFP Forum advice do you personally disagree with?

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  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    edited December 2018
    jjpptt2 wrote: »
    Well, maybe my biases and projections and experiences are stronger influences for me than I realize. I've made what I believe to be a reasonable point. I also see (and respect) the counter points being made by most of you - they certainly hold water. I enjoy good, thoughtful discussions like these, and I will try to be more cognizant of my own tendencies going forward... thank you for your thoughts.

    Edit: we cross-posted, so maybe this is moot now, but in furtherance of possible conversation I'll leave it.

    Are you saying that you believe that you are constantly told by MFP that you should ignore nutrition?

    I'm curious how your biases -- as mentioned by you -- come into this.

    From what you'd said here -- and forgive me if I get this wrong, I'm trying to be accurate to what I recall -- you don't eat the greatest diet and realize that, but struggle with food choice for reasons other than knowledge (emotional issues, habit, stuff like that). How does the advice on MFP play into that? I would agree that people are often told that if they are struggling and need to lose that just focusing on calories is a way to lose (which is different from saying that nutrition does not matter).

    I personally think nutrition is very important, it's easier for me to focus on that than calories, and easier for me to control calories if I am already focusing on nutrition and exercise. But I recognize that we all come to this from different places and that I enjoy thinking about nutrition and cooking and love vegetables and don't really like fast food isn't the case for everyone (or the be-all, end-all about nutrition), and so making baby steps can be helpful, or even just focusing on calories (which will naturally tend to cause people to gravitate to lower cal and more filling foods, IMO). Experimenting with what causes you to not be hungry, things like that, using common sense about meeting protein and other macros, getting in vegetables.

    I have a friend who lost about 100 lbs some years ago, and when she started she was very clear that she had no intention of changing her diet (which was pretty bad, mostly fast food). It was something of a rebellious thing -- I don't want to cook, I want to eat this way. She did lose a bunch doing that, although making better choices at the fast food places, and then increasingly got interested in cooking and changed more. I think -- and I think she'd acknowledge -- that she had food issues and being nagged about how she didn't eat right made it harder for her. Deciding she could do it her way, and didn't have to conform to norms, made it easier, at did focusing on just one change rather than feeling like she had to give up all the foods she loved.

    I didn't do it that way -- in my late 20s I realized I was getting fat because I'd stopped exercising, ate lots of high cal restaurant food we could get free at work, and then stuff that was free around the office. I decided I needed to find a way to cook my food and have a schedule, and did that, and started exercising again, and didn't count calories at all, and that worked for me then. But people have different things that work for them (and I managed to find a way in my late 30s to gain again while still eating a basically home-cooked, healthy diet).
  • walktalkdog
    walktalkdog Posts: 102 Member
    GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »
    walktalkdog wrote: »
    I have occasionally read on here the suggestion to those who are not losing as quickly as they hoped, or are stalled that they "need to to eat more to lose weight". Huh? That one I don't understand, nor agree with.

    Well, there's an underlying kernel of truth to that statement under specific circumstances, but as general advice goes, it's not good to bandy about.

    A scenario could play out wherein someone is over-restricting for a long period of time, their energy levels plummet, they become more lethargic, their exercise is less effective and burns less calories, they have less involuntary movement throughout the day, and their TDEE plummets. They may even struggle with compliance and have occasional binges.

    In a scenario like that, eating more to the point where they're still in a deficit but properly fueling themselves so they have better energy, get their TDEE back up and start burning more calories, and are able to remain compliant with their diet? It's good advice to eat more.

    Of course you can't fit all of that into a pithy statement.

    Thank you; I guess that makes sense for some people. Not for me, so that's why I can't wrap my head around it.
  • tigerblue
    tigerblue Posts: 1,526 Member
    There is some really good stuff in this thread! Brings back my confidence in MFP!
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,204 Member
    I joined MFP in the first place to get more specific in my food logging. I'd
    bobsanders1 wrote: »
    deannalfisher wrote: »
    bobsanders1 wrote: »
    UsE a fOoD ScALe

    why do you disagree with this?

    Because most people here believe its the be all end all of weight loss. Haven't weighted a single ounce of food in 6 months and doing just fine.

    Maybe for skinny people trying to "lose weight" it may help but those of us with a ton to drop its unnecessary and a waste of time. As long as your mindful of portion sizes it does the same job.

    I agree with you that it isn't essential for everyone (even said that explicitly on a thread I started about food scale time-saving tips, among other places).

    That said, I joined MFP after losing about halfway to what turned out to be goal weight (28 pounds down of 50-60 needed). I'd been eyeballing portions and estimating calories, which worked great . . . until it didn't. My weight loss slowed way down, and it wasn't clear to me where/how to make changes and still maintain really good nutrition.

    I figured I needed to track more accurately to keep the scale moving in my desired direction, so it was natural for me to start using a food scale and treat the process like a fun science-fair project. I'm just guessing, but I probably could've gotten along OK for another 10 pounds or so with better logging plus eyeballing. After that, I think it would've been much less manageable.

    I agree that there's sometimes an over-prescription of food scales, but the data one gets from accuracy is helpful in some ways (even when not strictly necessary), and I think it's 100% appropriate to suggest a food scale to someone who's complaining of plateaus or stalls or "unexplained" regain. It clarifies the picture.

    IMO, it can be a barrier that people who've never learned to use a food scale (efficiently) think it's going to be much more fussy, time-consuming and instrusive than it actually is. For sure, it's less time-consuming than a heavy reliance on cups/spoons measuring. More time-consuming than eyeballing, though.
  • leanjogreen18
    leanjogreen18 Posts: 2,492 Member
    edited December 2018
    bobsanders1 wrote: »
    deannalfisher wrote: »
    bobsanders1 wrote: »
    UsE a fOoD ScALe

    why do you disagree with this?

    Because most people here believe its the be all end all of weight loss. Haven't weighted a single ounce of food in 6 months and doing just fine.

    Maybe for skinny people trying to "lose weight" it may help but those of us with a ton to drop its unnecessary and a waste of time. As long as your mindful of portion sizes it does the same job.

    I think you and I can agree that people are diffrent. Different people struggle with different types of food issues. So to put everyone in the same box isn't fair.

    I too am not weighing everything, I do weigh somethings I just cant seem to eyeball like cashews I want a huge handful to be 160 calories when it's not.

    Portions in the US have become huge so those growing up in the last couple of decades have no idea a portion is about the size of your palm for most things (except cashews:) and calorie dense foods). Heck even professionals are not good at estimating calories its been shown.

    So while I agree with you that weighing food is not the be all end all of weight loss for some, I do believe that for others it sure is.
  • tigerblue
    tigerblue Posts: 1,526 Member
    Salixiana wrote: »
    I have a very hard time with the fact that MFP disregards nutrition other than general categories of carbs, protein and fat, when discussing weight loss. It's like this site views weight loss as if it were totally disconnected from essential human health.

    It's true that all you need in order to lose weight is a calorie deficit. But that doesn't mean that you can afford to disregard actual nutrition. Sure, you could lose weight by eating nothing but candy bars, as long as you kept under your calorie goal. And you could probably hit all your MFP macros by adding a protein shake or two to that candy bar diet. But your body as a whole organism would not thrive.

    "About 85% of Americans do not consume the US Food and Drug Administration’s recommended daily intakes of the most important vitamins and minerals necessary for proper physical and mental development."
    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/10/nutrition-hunger-food-children-vitamins-us

    "Malnutrition is thought of as a distant issue, but this condition often goes hand-in-hand with eight chronic diseases, and it costs the U.S. $15.5 billion annually in direct costs."
    http://www.nutritionnews.abbott/nutrition-as-medicine/malnutrition-in-america.html

    Anytime anyone mentions comparative nutritional value on here, they are "woo"ed to death. Even something as mild as stating that whole grain breads and brown rice are healthier than white bread and white rice provokes a chorus of disagreement. As if the key nutrients in complex carbohydrates and the outer germ and bran of grains (fiber, B vitamins, iron, folate, selenium, potassium and magnesium) are somehow meaningless. As if this advice from Mayo Clinic, based on accepted science, doesn't count:
    "Whole grains are also linked to a lower risk of heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers and other health problems."

    And MFP is one of the only sites I know of (outside of the Coca Cola website, maybe) where the SCIENTIFICALLY AGREED-UPON FACT that sugar is actually bad for you is treated as some sort of radical opinion. Science is real, people. No matter how many "woos" you give it.

    It is not only people who have diabetes who have to think about sugar. To quote just one of the uniform knowledgeable sources:

    “Regardless of their Healthy Eating Index scores, people who ate more sugar still had higher cardiovascular mortality,” says Dr. Teresa Fung, adjunct professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.
    https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eating-too-much-added-sugar-increases-the-risk-of-dying-with-heart-disease-201402067021

    It's like most people on MFP are so fixated on losing weight that they want to join together in an aggressive, in-your-face denial of nutritional facts. "There are no bad foods," is like biblical scripture here.

    If you fill up your calorie allotment with added sugars and low-nutrient, highly processed junk food and fast food, you are not going to be healthy -- even if you are losing weight. There is a reason to eat a wide variety of nutrient dense foods and minimize added sugars. Human beings need the wide range of micronutrients and trace elements that occur in fresh produce, good quality proteins, legumes, etc.

    Science is real.


    I am reading this "There are no bad foods" stuff a lot lately from lots of sources. While I know there is some truth to that, I am struggling with eating right to help my blood lipids panel, and for me there are some definite bad and good foods.

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