What happens when we eat poorly?
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what seems to be working for you in dieting? I really get sick of yo yo dieting. Right now I am 25 pounds over weight, and really don't look that heavy cause I try to walk my dog 2 miles when the weather permits. I just love food, and try to make foods at least some what appealing while I am dieting. Right now I am on a high protein, low carb diet. It has it's pros and cons. I am loosing slowly. So what type of eating or dieting would you suggest to havehavehave
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I'll try to answer that, but the answer is going to be long . . . because IMO the answer is not "dieting", or at least not what people usually mean when they use that word. It's a process.
As context, I'm in year 9+ of maintaining a loss, after just under a year of time losing 50 pounds back in 2015-16 at age 59-60. I love food, too. I'm an unapologetic hedonist, so I pretty much only do things I enjoy. The challenge for me, I suppose, is to achieve goals while indulging my hedonism.
At this point, I'm a big advocate for picking a relatively easy, personalized plan, rather than picking a fast or trendy one. The big prize here isn't losing weight, it's reaching a healthy weight then staying there long term, ideally permanently.
Accomplishing that - successful maintenance - is going to depend on experimenting, finding, and practicing new routine daily habits that are are reasonably enjoyable, at minimum practical and tolerable, affordable, and personally suitable . . . plus more positive than the old habits. That's a completely different mindset from trying to lose weight, as if weight management were a tough project with an end date. Good health is a forever endeavor.
When experimenting with candidate new habits, some attempts will not work out. That's not only not "I failed", it's actually helpful: We learn something that doesn't work for us, so we can cross that thing off our list, and try something else. As long as we keep chipping away at finding those personally-suitable permanent new routine habits, we'll succeed in the long run.
The one day when we eat too much cake or work out for 5 hours: That's a drop in the ocean. The ocean is the humdrum habits we follow day in and day out on most days. The majority of our days determines the majority of our results. That makes our routine habits the power tools for achieving and maintaining a healthy weight.
The habit space of interest for this encompasses both eating and activity. Activity is further subdivided into exercise and daily life stuff (job, chores, non-exercise hobbies, etc.).
For myself, this is how I went about the eating piece of that: Gradually remodeling my eating habits in a positive direction until I thought they were pretty good on average nutritionally, and were - at first, anyway - triggering weight loss at a sensibly moderate pace.
This post describes that kind of process in more detail:
On the activity side, as I said, there are two parts: Exercise, and increasing daily life movement. Let's take the daily life side of that first, because there's a thread here where many MFP-ers share their ideas for doing that. It can be a surprisingly big piece of the puzzle.
On the exercise front, for general good health, mainstream authorities recommend that we manageably work our way up to 150 minutes per week of moderate cardiovascular exercise, or 75 minutes per week of vigorous exercise per week, or a proportionate combination of the two, ideally spread over at least 5 days of the week; plus 2 days a week of something that challenges our current strength.
Cardiovascular exercise is pretty much anything that gets our heart rate up, as long as the heart rate increases because of oxygen demand. (Things like scary movies can raise heart rate, but don't burn meaningful extra calories because the cause isn't oxygen consumption.) Simplistically, moderate exercise gets heart rate up a little; vigorous exercise gets heart rate up a lot. As a simple example, steady walking at a reasonable but non-punitive pace would be moderate, but running at a challenging pace would be vigorous.
There are dozens, maybe hundreds of kinds of cardiovascular exercise. A few examples: Walking, cycling, swimming, canoeing/kayaking/rowing, any of many types of martial arts, dozens of kind of dancing, various games (pickleball, ping pong, tennis, basketball, ice hockey, softball, curling, etc.), active video or VR games, ice or roller skating, aerobics, . . . I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
Which one to do? The one(s) you find the most fun, or at least tolerable and convenient. It's not about finding "the best exercise". It's about finding ways of moving more that we like so much we want to do them, not things that are so unpleasant that we skip them at the slightest excuse, and eventually give them up altogether.
Any exercise we actually do is 100% more beneficial for health or fitness than something theoretically more ideal that we don't like doing, so rarely or never actually do. It doesn't have to be gym-y things unless a person likes gym-y things.
Strength exercise? Anything muscularly challenging. Sure, weight lifting is usually the most time-efficient and effective, but it's not the only way. For sure, body weight exercise, some kinds of calisthenics, resistance bands, power-oriented forms of yoga or Pilates - those can challenge strength. Even some things people usually consider "cardio" can be strength challenging. Again, pick what's the most fun, or at least tolerable and convenient.
Don't try to adopt some massive exercise plan all at once. Overdoing is counter-productive for any of weight loss, fitness improvement, or health. Build up gradually. A manageable challenge is the sweet spot: Other than maybe a few minutes of "whew" right after a workout, we ideally feel energized - not exhausted - for the rest of our day(s).
How to find the right exercises? Same deal as eating: Experiment. Give things a fair chance, because it's utterly standard to feel awkward at first, like we'll never get it. But things that are easy at first get boring fast, usually. Then, if you don't like it after a a few sessions, cross it off the list and try something else.
TL; DR: Good daily routine habits that head in a positive direction. That's (1) Personally enjoyable eating habits that keep us reasonably full at a sensible calorie level, and ideally add up to reasonable nutrition overall on average over a small number of days; (2) ideally fun but at least tolerable and convenient exercise; (3) moving more in daily life when possible. That's it. Exactly what that is will very individual, because we're each unique people with different preferences, strengths, challenges and lifestyles. If you commit to trying things with an open mind, and chipping away until you find the right combination, you'll succeed.
Just my opinions, of course. Best wishes!
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I feel pretty confident in betting on the apple pie, as it has a greater variety of nutrients.
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I completely agree.
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@genre009 - I too love whole foods and it’s my preferred way to eat. I also do low carb, low glycemic.. but I also have insulin resistance so it’s long term for me not particularly for weight loss. I do have plenty of variety though.
Glad to see you also are into fresh produce and alike! It’s great to read more posts on gut health as well.
Re apples or apple pie. I think there is room for both. Personal tastes and needs vary!
ps- the NIH links were more because you sound like you enjoy nutrition or health research - not to diss your info link. 😉2 -
Life style changes are very important. In staying slim and healthy. Thanks for your detailed info on what you are doing.
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I am a very lazy exerciser. I only like resistant exercises, cause they are easy and fun. I only will do weights and machines when I am within 10 pounds of my goal weight.
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Yeah, I'm low carb/ketogenic as well, it's been a life saver and more importantly for me, a journey of discovery. 😊
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Does ketogenic diet mean you can eat foods that are high cholesterol foods? Cheese and such? It sounds a lot tastier than what I am eating?
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Yes, all animal protein which is the main source on the ketogenic diet, is where all dietary cholesterol is found. And yes, a lot more tasty in my opinion.
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I'm confused: What are you eating? Most people should be able to eat foods that add up to the right number of calories, and deliver decent overall nutrition, while still choosing foods they like, or at least tolerate pretty well, unless they are really unusually picky eaters. There's no need to eat all "diet food", "superfoods", etc.
That thing a lot of women used to do, eating mostly salads and veggies, bare minimum fats and not much protein: That's not ideally healthy, either.
Admittedly many people feel more full more of the time when a large fraction of their eating is things like meat, fish/seafood, veggies, fruits, whole grains, and that sort of thing, rather than refined or highly processed foods. But it's not an absolute decree.
Weight loss comes from eating the right number of calories. For anyone meaningfully overweight, just reaching a healthy weight will improve their health or health risk. (Though I wouldn't recommend it, there have been people who lost weight eating only McDonald's, mostly snacks they could get at a convenience store (like Twinkies), and things of that nature . . . and their blood test results improved. Yes, they mostly did it as a stunt, but that was the outcome.)
For health, we also need reasonable overall nutrition, but that's like a jigsaw puzzle we can assemble from various foods, potentially including some processed or treat foods in the mix if doing that helps us stick with the program. A mini candy bar or fried food I eat doesn't wipe out the broccoli, barley, or chia seeds I ate earlier in the day.
If a keto diet suits you better, go for it. But if any reasonably nutritious diet suits you better than your current approach, that's fine, too. It doesn't need to be some much-touted named diet. Don't make the process any harder than it need to be, I'd suggest.
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