Diet and fitness FADS you’ve tried before...
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Slim fast in college. Which I did not need to do because I was a size 6, but still felt so fat. Lord do I wish I could have that body back now and appreciate it.
South Beach. My mom and I did this one together along with my best friend at the time. We all did really well on it. Out of the fad diets, I feel like it is the least troublesome. While it is low carb, it's not as extreme as others pushing the same thing. I actually am thinking about using some of the recipes and ideas again to reduce carbs from things like pasta and rice because I feel they are pushing out the carbs from fruits and vegetables which have a higher nutritional benefit.
Weight Watchers. Didn't last long because I thought the idea of points and "free foods" was stupid.
VLCD. This happened right before I started MFP and reading these forums. Realized I could eat a lot more food and still do well.3 -
SlimFast
Atkins
LA Weight Loss type place - TWICE! And that *kitten* was expensive.
Hydroxycut
ACV (that lasted like two days. YUCK!)
I'm sure I'm forgetting something.4 -
@Avidkeo, regarding WW - yes, that's it exactly. No matter what their "system" is at any given time, I consider it a fad diet because it doesn't actually teach you how to eat. They also tend to discourage many questions about how and why the system works the way it does, or at least, that was my experience all those years ago. It also presents weight loss and the use of their system as a temporary thing you do until your body is an acceptable size, which is the kind of mindset that leads to yo-yo dieting. That's what they want, of course; you give them your money until you're a size whatever, then you stop using the system without having learned anything so you balloon back up, so you get back on WW since it worked before. And yes, the periodic "changes" to how the system works also serve as quasi-scientific window dressing; that, combined with how long the company has been in operation, lend it an air of legitimacy. It does just come down to calorie restriction, which is how all diets work, but it's calorie restriction dressed up in bright colors and obscured with funky math.4
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goal06082021 wrote: »@Avidkeo, regarding WW - yes, that's it exactly. No matter what their "system" is at any given time, I consider it a fad diet because it doesn't actually teach you how to eat. They also tend to discourage many questions about how and why the system works the way it does, or at least, that was my experience all those years ago. It also presents weight loss and the use of their system as a temporary thing you do until your body is an acceptable size, which is the kind of mindset that leads to yo-yo dieting. That's what they want, of course; you give them your money until you're a size whatever, then you stop using the system without having learned anything so you balloon back up, so you get back on WW since it worked before. And yes, the periodic "changes" to how the system works also serve as quasi-scientific window dressing; that, combined with how long the company has been in operation, lend it an air of legitimacy. It does just come down to calorie restriction, which is how all diets work, but it's calorie restriction dressed up in bright colors and obscured with funky math.
That's an interesting take, but totally different from my take away. To me the points system was basically the same as calorie counting, but simplified, and I ate whatever I wanted within my points. So it was basically portion control. I actually only counted points for the first few weeks though and then just continued to lose weight until I hit my goal (and beyond actually, I kept losing a bit too much weight).
I guess I can't really wrap my mind around how calorie restriction from any method is teaching you how to eat? Both of them are based on portion control, and if you let your portions creep up after you are done you will gain. I certainly didn't "balloon back up" when I was done with it. Like a lot of people (even here) over a few years my portions, and thus my weight, did a gradual creep up to where I need to lose again.
I actually would have done weight watchers again, but they changed the system and it seemed more complicated than when I did it, so I ended up here instead.
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Slimfast
South Beach Phase 2
It was before calory counting apps and they were good ways for me to control my food intake. They also "worked" inasmuch as I was exercising 2hours a day when I did either of them.
I see a lot of people mentioning Atkins as a fad. But then people who do keto swear it's a lifestyle not a fad. Isn't it the same thing ?1 -
Keto is a fad. It's just the current version of low carb eating which has been around for a long time. Atkins and then South Beach were prior versions. Dr. Stillman was a still earlier version. IF is a fad. So is Paleo. Fad diets are very popular for a while, but hard to sustain long term. They get replaced by something that is either easier to follow or endorsed by the right celebrities and magazines. People are always looking for a quick fix and hope that the newest craze will be the one that works.8
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I wouldn't call c25k a fad. Its an excellent way for someone to slowly build up to running. It's not only still around, but recommended a lot by most runners for new runners for the above reason. Also its free.
Colour run is a fad, that I agree with
I agree. c25k is what really got me started 10 years ago and helped me lose 61 lbs. I'm up 16 since then, but I still run regularly and I ALWAYS recommend it to newbies who wanna start.
As for fads I've tried...grapefruit diet, cabbage soup diet and slimfast are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Logging was really the way to go. I think logging for so long gave me a much better understanding of food/calories and is probably what helped me not gain ALL the weight back once I quit logging.
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My last day with WW happened when they would beat the drum about eating ALL the points and ALL the water every single day Even though I knew that my late day meeting weigh-in would be thrown off by a large meal and meeting my water goals that day, I did as advised. Naturally, the just-consumed food and water made a difference and the group leader admonished me for not following the plan.
Buh-bye!3 -
goal06082021 wrote: »@Avidkeo, regarding WW - yes, that's it exactly. No matter what their "system" is at any given time, I consider it a fad diet because it doesn't actually teach you how to eat. They also tend to discourage many questions about how and why the system works the way it does, or at least, that was my experience all those years ago. It also presents weight loss and the use of their system as a temporary thing you do until your body is an acceptable size, which is the kind of mindset that leads to yo-yo dieting. That's what they want, of course; you give them your money until you're a size whatever, then you stop using the system without having learned anything so you balloon back up, so you get back on WW since it worked before. And yes, the periodic "changes" to how the system works also serve as quasi-scientific window dressing; that, combined with how long the company has been in operation, lend it an air of legitimacy. It does just come down to calorie restriction, which is how all diets work, but it's calorie restriction dressed up in bright colors and obscured with funky math.
That's an interesting take, but totally different from my take away. To me the points system was basically the same as calorie counting, but simplified, and I ate whatever I wanted within my points. So it was basically portion control. I actually only counted points for the first few weeks though and then just continued to lose weight until I hit my goal (and beyond actually, I kept losing a bit too much weight).
I guess I can't really wrap my mind around how calorie restriction from any method is teaching you how to eat? Both of them are based on portion control, and if you let your portions creep up after you are done you will gain. I certainly didn't "balloon back up" when I was done with it. Like a lot of people (even here) over a few years my portions, and thus my weight, did a gradual creep up to where I need to lose again.
I actually would have done weight watchers again, but they changed the system and it seemed more complicated than when I did it, so I ended up here instead.
I believe with calorie counting anyway, it depends on how you choose to use the tool. If it is simply a means to an end to simply count calories to get to some arbitrary number on the scale then one probably wouldn't learn a whole lot...particularly if it is viewed as a temporary weight loss effort. I personally found it very educational in teaching me how to provide my body the energy it needs to do the things I want to do and to also improve my overall nutritional profile. I haven't logged or had to log in years or done any kind of special diets and whatnot, and I credit that mostly to what I learned while I was calorie counting for about 7 or 8 months. I can eyeball portions pretty good and I'm pretty good at guestimating calories and whatnot in most things give or take, and my nutrition is far better than it was 8.5 years ago when I started with MFP.4 -
I can remember as a teenager doing the "Mayo Clinic Grapfruit Diet" with my mother. Of course it wasn't affiliated with the mayo clinic in any way but having those words typed on the page made it sound very scientificly based. I was into sports and a healthy size so didn't actually need to lose any weight. I just wasn't small and cute like other girls at school.
Had success with WW after my first pregnancy. Rhubarb counted as a free vegetable so I ate gallons of stewed rhubard with artificial sweetener. Haven't touched rhubard since.
Attended a place called Diet Centre after my second pregnancy. Very restrictive and had daily weigh-ins with a counsellor. Lost the pregnancy weight in no time.
Tried Slimfast after my third child. Lost the weight and promptly re-gained it when I stopped drinking the shakes. Spent the next 23 years gradually gaining weight. Finally decided enough was enough and found MFP.
I have definitely learned the most by using MFP. It changed my way of thinking from "temporary diet" to "way of life".
Re: C25K. I don't run at all in the winter months so every spring I re-start C25K and run till late October. I think its a great app.4 -
The only thing I've tried was like 20 years ago, I stumbled across some hunger suppression pills on Amazon. I had seen things like Dexatrim at the stores and noted how expensive they were. These pills were much cheaper, so I thought I'd give them a shot. I will say they worked pretty well in suppressing hunger but they must've just been amped up caffeine pills. I wasn't hungry, but I felt like a vibrating tuning fork all the time. I took them for a week and ate pretty sensibly (what I would consider sensibly, anyway) but I just could not stand feeling so jittery.3
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South Beach
Slim Fast (that only lasted couple days)
WW (This worked but this before they had an APP and we had to log everything in a paper journal and look up all the points in a book)
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Only weight watchers, but I had to try it 3 times before I figured out it just wasn’t for me. Yes, it was only calorie counting, their way. Of course, now that I’m a little better educated, I realize 1200 calories just isn’t right for everyone, and it certainly wasn’t right for a 5’10” farmer, young, active and strong.
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Keto. I'm sure its great for some people but I just didn't enjoy the food and lack of certain foods to be more specific. I think for a diet to work, you need to start thinking about it as a lifestyle change and at least enjoy the good and nutritious foods your eatting. By completely taking out some of my faves it made me want to binge even more and crave wayyyyy more.
I used to weight 150 ish. I weight 130ish now. All I did was decide on a better life style. I dont have cheat days. I treat my self once in awhile without overindulging. This makes me less likely to binge or have food cravings and now I even say no most of the time to take out or junk food. I also incorporate excercise as a daily activity and listen to my body. So if I over did it, Ill take a day off and maybe do some yoga for the target areas im sore in. I try and stay within my calorie limit and eat healthy. But I have decided not to feel guilty about going over a bit or a missing a day of excercise. Wayy less stress this way.
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I did the “Mayo Clinic Grapefruit Diet” too!
Regarding WW (which I have done and lost on), I have mixed feelings but personally come down on the side of fad and here is why:
(1) they change the system every few years bc they need to keep you subscribing and interested, so I didn’t like that what I had learned was constantly being replaced with new methods I had to learn;
(2) the point system, while similar to counting calories, really isn’t the same. WW wants to steer you towards “healthy” eating so they reward you by artificially lowering the point values of some foods (think free fruits and vegetables and now some proteins), and artificially inflate other foods (something low calorie but high sugar or fat). I hated that a piece of toasted bread (dry) could be like 5 points which might be 25% of my points for the day but I knew it was only 90 calories so it didn’t make sense to me;
(3) as someone else said, there is mystery around their points formula so it becomes hard to just adapt when eating out at non-chain restaurants;
(4) I felt there was no focus on maintenance or creating habits that were sustainable for a lifetime. Their entire business model is to create loyal lifelong members who diet, lose weight, stop going, gain weight, and then come back. I probably did this 5 or 6 times. There is a great WW episode on the podcast “Maintenance Phase” if you are interested (hosted by Michael Hobbes of the “You’re Wrong About” podcast for anyone who listens to that);
(5) In the end, despite losing weight several times successfully on the various programs, I never really did learn how to eat forever. I didn’t know how many calories it took to fuel my body every day, what kind of calorie deficit I would have to create to lose, how my body worked in relation to the food I ate.
I love CICO bc I feel like I understand my body so much more. I used to feel if I went over my points for the day the whole day was lost. Now I know if my TDEE is 2000, and I was shooting for 1750 calories, but I ate 1900, I still ate at a deficit so I’m still having a good day. Or if I ate 2300 and was up a pound on the scale the next day, now I know I couldn’t have gained a pound bc 300 calories is not 3500 calories above my TDEE, which puts my mind at ease. it’s all science and fact gathering about your body.10 -
Slimfast
The Low Fat diet fad in the 80s and 90s..I remember my aunt and my mom dragging me along to some seminar a lady was giving where she also mentioned she was selling books (surprise surprise!). The family bought them all. Luckily that was short lived.2 -
I tried hydroxycut, or some simar kind of pills. They just made me angry and impatient until one night I just cried and threw them out!4
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dragon_girl26 wrote: »Slimfast
The Low Fat diet fad in the 80s and 90s..I remember my aunt and my mom dragging me along to some seminar a lady was giving where she also mentioned she was selling books (surprise surprise!). The family bought them all. Luckily that was short lived.
My grandma was ALL ABOUT the low-fat life in the early 90s. Do you remember the Devil's Food cookies in the green box? I don't remember what brand they were but I LOVED them and my grandma would always make sure she had some for me when we visited. No idea how many calories they had but tHeYr'E LoW fAt so I was allowed to have about a thousand of them per visit. Mamaw's house tastes like Devil's Food cookies and Diet Rite cola.5 -
Honestly, I think that anything super-popular can be a fad, even if it's something that works for a segment of folks, and has sane underpinnings.
I'm really old, so I endorse the idea that WW was created before calorie counting was practical, and the (then version) points version was a simplification to make the same concept more practical. When calorie counting directly became a more realistic practice, WW started scrambling and changing things up, it seemed like, to hold onto their revenue stream.
I did some low-carb thing when they first became popular, a zillion years ago, but lasted about 3 days: Miserable, for me. For about 15 minutes, I flirted with the Susan Powter Stop the Insanity low fat nonsense, but can't claim to have really followed it.
Most of the time, I just stayed fat, which I guess is it's own kind of fad, as so many seem to do it? I'm grateful not to have been a big yo-yo dieter, because it looks to me like that's kind of the worst of all worlds, health-wise.
Calorie counting worked, though . . . it just took me until age 59 to get there. 🤷♀️ Getting pretty active in my mid-40s, even while staying obese, was pretty helpful health-wise, too, but far from a full solution. Between the two, 65 feels pretty good so far, gotta say. 🙂
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goal06082021 wrote: »dragon_girl26 wrote: »Slimfast
The Low Fat diet fad in the 80s and 90s..I remember my aunt and my mom dragging me along to some seminar a lady was giving where she also mentioned she was selling books (surprise surprise!). The family bought them all. Luckily that was short lived.
My grandma was ALL ABOUT the low-fat life in the early 90s. Do you remember the Devil's Food cookies in the green box? I don't remember what brand they were but I LOVED them and my grandma would always make sure she had some for me when we visited. No idea how many calories they had but tHeYr'E LoW fAt so I was allowed to have about a thousand of them per visit. Mamaw's house tastes like Devil's Food cookies and Diet Rite cola.
Are you referring to the Snackwell cookies? I think I actually saw those not too long ago. I didn't even think they were still around. 😀2 -
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dragon_girl26 wrote: »
THAT'S THE BINCH
God I haven't seen those in years. Looks like they might have ruined them with the "more marshmallow," though. The thin layer of marshmallow around the soft, yielding cookie was the best part.4 -
dragon_girl26 wrote: »goal06082021 wrote: »dragon_girl26 wrote: »Slimfast
The Low Fat diet fad in the 80s and 90s..I remember my aunt and my mom dragging me along to some seminar a lady was giving where she also mentioned she was selling books (surprise surprise!). The family bought them all. Luckily that was short lived.
My grandma was ALL ABOUT the low-fat life in the early 90s. Do you remember the Devil's Food cookies in the green box? I don't remember what brand they were but I LOVED them and my grandma would always make sure she had some for me when we visited. No idea how many calories they had but tHeYr'E LoW fAt so I was allowed to have about a thousand of them per visit. Mamaw's house tastes like Devil's Food cookies and Diet Rite cola.
Are you referring to the Snackwell cookies? I think I actually saw those not too long ago. I didn't even think they were still around. 😀
LOL I loved me some Snackwells--the vanilla sandwich cookies were my favorite! I wanna say they were around 100 calories for 2 cookies? I actually wondered if they were still around the other day while at the grocery store, and happened to see some. There's a lot less of them than there used to be.2 -
I remember buying ephedrine pills when they were legal. Didn't really help me lose weight, but they were great when I was driving cross country to visit my aging parents 1
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My first diet ever, 15 yrs ago,
Atkins Diet, it was a mind blowing at that time,
I lost more than 60lbs in 4-5 months, the slimmest i’ve ever been. And was walking around 2 -3 hours a day.
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Speakeasy76 wrote: »dragon_girl26 wrote: »goal06082021 wrote: »dragon_girl26 wrote: »Slimfast
The Low Fat diet fad in the 80s and 90s..I remember my aunt and my mom dragging me along to some seminar a lady was giving where she also mentioned she was selling books (surprise surprise!). The family bought them all. Luckily that was short lived.
My grandma was ALL ABOUT the low-fat life in the early 90s. Do you remember the Devil's Food cookies in the green box? I don't remember what brand they were but I LOVED them and my grandma would always make sure she had some for me when we visited. No idea how many calories they had but tHeYr'E LoW fAt so I was allowed to have about a thousand of them per visit. Mamaw's house tastes like Devil's Food cookies and Diet Rite cola.
Are you referring to the Snackwell cookies? I think I actually saw those not too long ago. I didn't even think they were still around. 😀
LOL I loved me some Snackwells--the vanilla sandwich cookies were my favorite! I wanna say they were around 100 calories for 2 cookies? I actually wondered if they were still around the other day while at the grocery store, and happened to see some. There's a lot less of them than there used to be.
Yeah, I thought there used to be a lot of other varieties and I do remember the sandwich cookies, but that was really about all (I was still really young at this time). The only ones I've seen recently at the store are the Devil's food ones, so I don't know if others still exist.1 -
goal06082021 wrote: »dragon_girl26 wrote: »
THAT'S THE BINCH
God I haven't seen those in years. Looks like they might have ruined them with the "more marshmallow," though. The thin layer of marshmallow around the soft, yielding cookie was the best part.
I didn't notice the 'more marshmallow' part, but you're probably right. I always liked that chocolately part around the outside the best by far!1 -
SO many!! Cabbage soup, nothing till 2:30 - coffee & dinner, Jenny Craig, WW, Atkins, pills (fen-fen) - remember that one? IF, low carb. I'm sure there are more I've forgotten. I moved to LA in my mid 20's and realized everyone was very thin. I immediately joined Jenny Craig to look like my friends. I remember when I went home to visit my parents they were worried about me - 5'10" and 140. That's the crazy part - I wasn't heavy.
CICO is really the only thing that lasts. Atkins and WW helped post pregnancies.
I do really well when I log intake and exercise. I love to eat & drink and cook. Logging helps me remember that I can have a portion - but if I eat 3x portions, adds up quickly.
A friend said to me recently, "Are we going to be talking about this for the rest of our lives?" I think probably so! Thanks all for sharing, the forums are good.7 -
My mum tried the Cambridge Diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, and (I can’t believe no-one’s mentioned this one yet) the ‘F’ Plan Diet. I really loved some of the meals she cooked us from that book - especially the fruity ‘bran cake’ - and I still like to add a can of baked beans to my chilli-con-carne when it’s my turn to cook up a batch, much to my husband’s disgust.
Lots of people have mentioned WW, but not Slimming World - a similar points-based system with ‘free’ foods and ‘syns’ (and is the one my mum has stuck with for years). I did lose a stone (14lb) on this but I didn’t keep it off. I do worry that all the ‘free’ foods are what keeps my mum from reaching her ‘goal’, and that maybe it’s deliberately designed that way...?
So, I’m not treating MFP as a ‘dieting’ tool, like I did last time round: the changes I am making now will be ‘for keeps’.6 -
Ayds
Grapefruit Diet
Limiting myself to tuna, fruit, vegetables and cottage cheese for a summer. (Over 40 years later I still have a hard time eating canned tuna)
Ice Cream Diet
Cabbage Soup Diet
Slimfast
I was successful on Weight Watchers. Many or those listed above I tried multiple times.2
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