I ATE PIZZA AND ICE CREAM BED, WOKE UP LESS FAT

It's truly a crazy phenomenon, isn't it? There's so much defiance from those that eat junk food and lose weight, that those of us that try to eat healthy (most of the time) are doing something 'wrong.' Yes, my thyroid is fine. Yes, I understand that calorie deficit is king, and I can get that eating cheeseburgers and pizza every day. But I'm trying to do more than just lose weight, and since I think it's important to be healthy (which includes being at a healthy weight, but is more than just tha), that's what I would advocate for others if they asked for my advice. If they choose to do it on a steady diet of McDonalds and Burger King, then great for them. I just can't recommend it with a good conscious - that's how I got fat, and I'm sure what contributed to my dad being obese, and my mom (not obese) having a heart attack and stroke before age 50.

Proof? Or simply baseless conjecture?

You seriously need proof that a steady consumption of fast food and total crap eating is/was a contributing factor to my dad's obesity, or my mom's heart attack and stroke before age 50? I forgot about the Type II diabetes she was dx'd with while in the hospital after the stroke. Do you want me to get their doctor to write a note for you? There isn't a family history of obesity or heart attack and smoking/drinking isn't a factor for either of them.

There's a million studies that would tell you it's a logical assumption. Or you could just use common sense. I'm honestly not even sure what you're questioning.

Although it is good to eat in moderation, in order to become a healthier being, some foods are better for you than others. Many foods, such as baby carrots, have fat more vitamins and other good nutrients than ice cream, pizza, and burgers do - weight loss and becoming healthy isn't only about calories.

I'm questioning the suggestion that it was fast food specifically and that an over consumption of home cooked food couldn't have also lead to obesity and health issues.

The question remains: Can you prove it was fast good, or was it merely over consumption? If you can find me a study that says that fast food itself, as part of a normal balanced diet, causes health issues and doesn't point to over consumption as the source of problems I'd be interested to see it.

So. Yeah. Seriously.

Where did I say anything about them eating a normal balance diet?!? It wasn't possible for them to over consume home cooked food because they didn't cook much. It's sort of a logical conclusion for MY parents. YMMV.

I had Burger King for dinner. I'm not saying that you can't have fast food ever. I'm saying that it's a logical conclusion, based on how MY parents ate, that a steady intake of crap foods has been a contributing factor to my dad's obesity, and my mom's health problems. I didn't say it was the only factor. I acknowledged in my first post that you can lose weigh at a calorie deficit, but it isn't all about just dropping pounds, to ME personally. I'm a little confused as to how you can argue what I know about my own parents since you don't know anything about them. You seem to be confusing a calorie deficit with being healthy. They are not the same thing to me.

But here's the risk factors for heart disease that can't be controlled:

Male sex
Older age
Family history of heart disease
Post-menopausal
Race (African Americans, American Indians, and Mexican Americans are more likely to have heart disease than Caucasians)

Here's how many of those risk factors my mom had: 0

The rest of the risk factors are things that a person CAN control to some extent:

Smoking.
High LDL, or "bad" cholesterol and low HDL, or "good" cholesterol.
Uncontrolled hypertension (high blood pressure).
Physical inactivity.
Obesity (more than 20% over one's ideal body weight).
Uncontrolled diabetes.
High C-reactive protein.
Uncontrolled stress and anger.


And here's some of the ways you can reduce your risk of heart attack - as you can see, most of them have to do with eating a balanced diet, limiting saturated fats (quite high in most fast food), being at an ideal body weight, etc. My parents weren't eating salads with dressing on the side every day, clearly. Most people don't.

Improve cholesterol levels. The risk for heart disease increases as your total amount of cholesterol increases. In general, your total cholesterol goal should be less than 200 mg/dl; HDL, the good cholesterol, higher than 40 mg/dl in men and 50 mg/dl in women (and the higher the better); and LDL should be less than 130 mg/dl in healthy adults. For those with diabetes or multiple risk factors for heart disease, LDL goal should be less than 100 mg/dl (some experts recommend less than 70 mg/dl if you are very high risk). Interpretation and treatment of cholesterol values must be individualized, taking into account all of your risk factors for heart disease. A diet low in cholesterol and saturated and trans fat will help lower cholesterol levels and reduce your risk for heart disease. Regular exercise will also help lower "bad" cholesterol and raise "good" cholesterol. Medications are often needed to reach cholesterol goals.

Control high blood pressure. About 60 million people in the U.S. have hypertension, or high blood pressure, making it the most common heart disease risk factor. Nearly one in three adults has systolic blood pressure (the upper number) over 140, and/or diastolic blood pressure (the lower number) over 90, which is the definition of hypertension. Like cholesterol, blood pressure interpretation and treatment should be individualized, taking into account your entire risk profile. Control blood pressure through diet, exercise, weight management, and if needed, medications.
Control diabetes. If not properly controlled, diabetes can contribute to significant heart damage, including heart attacks and death. Control diabetes through a healthy diet, exercise, maintaining a healthy weight, and taking medications as prescribed by your doctor.

Get active. Many of us lead sedentary lives, exercising infrequently or not at all. People who don't exercise have higher rates of death and heart disease compared to people who perform even mild to moderate amounts of physical activity. Even leisure-time activities like gardening or walking can lower your risk of heart disease. Most people should exercise 30 minutes a day, at moderate intensity, on most days. More vigorous activities are associated with more benefits. Exercise should be aerobic, involving the large muscle groups. Aerobic activities include brisk walking, cycling, swimming, jumping rope, and jogging. If walking is your exercise of choice, use the pedometer goal of 10,000 steps a day. Consult your doctor before starting any exercise program.

Eat right . Eat a heart-healthy diet low in salt, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, and refined sugars. Try to increase your intake of foods rich in vitamins and other nutrients, especially antioxidants, which have been proven to lower your risk for heart disease. Also eat plant-based foods such as fruits and vegetables, nuts, and whole grains.
Achieve and maintain a healthy weight. Excess weight puts significant strain on your heart and worsens several other heart disease risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol and triglycerides. Research is showing that obesity itself increases heart disease risk. By eating right and exercising, you can lose weight and reduce your risk of heart disease.

I'm questioning the suggestion that it was fast food specifically and that an over consumption of home cooked food couldn't have also lead to obesity and health issues.

The question remains: Can you prove it was fast good, or was it merely over consumption? If you can find me a study that says that fast food itself, as part of a normal balanced diet, causes health issues and doesn't point to over consumption as the source of problems I'd be interested to see it.

So. Yeah. Seriously.

Where did I say anything about them eating a normal balance diet?!? It wasn't possible for them to over consume home cooked food because they didn't cook much. It's sort of a logical conclusion for MY parents. YMMV.

I had Burger King for dinner. I'm not saying that you can't have fast food ever. I'm saying that it's a logical conclusion, based on how MY parents ate, that a steady intake of crap foods has been a contributing factor to my dad's obesity, and my mom's health problems. I didn't say it was the only factor. I acknowledged in my first post that you can lose weigh at a calorie deficit, but it isn't all about just dropping pounds, to ME personally. I'm a little confused as to how you can argue what I know about my own parents since you don't know anything about them. You seem to be confusing a calorie deficit with being healthy. They are not the same thing to me.

But here's the risk factors for heart disease that can't be controlled:

Male sex
Older age
Family history of heart disease
Post-menopausal
Race (African Americans, American Indians, and Mexican Americans are more likely to have heart disease than Caucasians)

Here's how many of those risk factors my mom had: 0

The rest of the risk factors are things that a person CAN control to some extent:

Smoking.
High LDL, or "bad" cholesterol and low HDL, or "good" cholesterol.
Uncontrolled hypertension (high blood pressure).
Physical inactivity.
Obesity (more than 20% over one's ideal body weight).
Uncontrolled diabetes.
High C-reactive protein.
Uncontrolled stress and anger.


And here's some of the ways you can reduce your risk of heart attack - as you can see, most of them have to do with eating a balanced diet, limiting saturated fats (quite high in most fast food), being at an ideal body weight, etc. My parents weren't eating salads with dressing on the side every day, clearly. Most people don't.

Improve cholesterol levels. The risk for heart disease increases as your total amount of cholesterol increases. In general, your total cholesterol goal should be less than 200 mg/dl; HDL, the good cholesterol, higher than 40 mg/dl in men and 50 mg/dl in women (and the higher the better); and LDL should be less than 130 mg/dl in healthy adults. For those with diabetes or multiple risk factors for heart disease, LDL goal should be less than 100 mg/dl (some experts recommend less than 70 mg/dl if you are very high risk). Interpretation and treatment of cholesterol values must be individualized, taking into account all of your risk factors for heart disease. A diet low in cholesterol and saturated and trans fat will help lower cholesterol levels and reduce your risk for heart disease. Regular exercise will also help lower "bad" cholesterol and raise "good" cholesterol. Medications are often needed to reach cholesterol goals.

Control high blood pressure. About 60 million people in the U.S. have hypertension, or high blood pressure, making it the most common heart disease risk factor. Nearly one in three adults has systolic blood pressure (the upper number) over 140, and/or diastolic blood pressure (the lower number) over 90, which is the definition of hypertension. Like cholesterol, blood pressure interpretation and treatment should be individualized, taking into account your entire risk profile. Control blood pressure through diet, exercise, weight management, and if needed, medications.
Control diabetes. If not properly controlled, diabetes can contribute to significant heart damage, including heart attacks and death. Control diabetes through a healthy diet, exercise, maintaining a healthy weight, and taking medications as prescribed by your doctor.

Get active. Many of us lead sedentary lives, exercising infrequently or not at all. People who don't exercise have higher rates of death and heart disease compared to people who perform even mild to moderate amounts of physical activity. Even leisure-time activities like gardening or walking can lower your risk of heart disease. Most people should exercise 30 minutes a day, at moderate intensity, on most days. More vigorous activities are associated with more benefits. Exercise should be aerobic, involving the large muscle groups. Aerobic activities include brisk walking, cycling, swimming, jumping rope, and jogging. If walking is your exercise of choice, use the pedometer goal of 10,000 steps a day. Consult your doctor before starting any exercise program.

Eat right . Eat a heart-healthy diet low in salt, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, and refined sugars. Try to increase your intake of foods rich in vitamins and other nutrients, especially antioxidants, which have been proven to lower your risk for heart disease. Also eat plant-based foods such as fruits and vegetables, nuts, and whole grains.
Achieve and maintain a healthy weight. Excess weight puts significant strain on your heart and worsens several other heart disease risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol and triglycerides. Research is showing that obesity itself increases heart disease risk. By eating right and exercising, you can lose weight and reduce your risk of heart disease.

MFP: Eat all the crap you want in moderation, get thin, but never healthy.

But here's the risk factors for heart disease that can't be controlled:

Male sex
Older age
Family history of heart disease
Post-menopausal
Race (African Americans, American Indians, and Mexican Americans are more likely to have heart disease than Caucasians)

Here's how many of those risk factors my mom had: 0

The rest of the risk factors are things that a person CAN control to some extent:

Smoking.
High LDL, or "bad" cholesterol and low HDL, or "good" cholesterol.
Uncontrolled hypertension (high blood pressure).
Physical inactivity.
Obesity (more than 20% over one's ideal body weight).
Uncontrolled diabetes.
High C-reactive protein.
Uncontrolled stress and anger.

MFP: Eat all the crap you want in moderation, get thin, but never healthy.

In...

...to learn how my healthy blood markers are somehow unhealthy because so many of my calories come from "fast food".

Sure you can eat junk food and lose weight. As your calories gets lower the volume of food you can eat from say mcdonalds is pretty small. Where as the volume of food you can get from whole non-processed foods is much larger, and more filling.

Also why eat all those chemicals? There are nearly 30+ ingredients in a mc donalds bun. Bread generally has 5 ingredients if you eat real bread. Not to mention sodium. Sodium is nasty.

But I do love mc donalds and eat it every once in a while. I am just at such low calories at the moment that junk food is not an option volume wise.

Sadly, I am not this lucky. If I eat within three hours or so before going to bed, I will inevitably be up the next morning.

ummm...you realize the food you eat had actual weight before you ate it, and once you put that weight in your body, the weight of your body now weighs the amount of the food until it's digested and used as fuel or expelled from your body, right? like, if I drink 2 liter of diet coke and then weigh myself right after, i'm going to weigh more. we're on the same page here, right?

Sadly, I am not this lucky. If I eat within three hours or so before going to bed, I will inevitably be up the next morning.

ummm...you realize the food you eat had actual weight before you ate it, and once you put that weight in your body, the weight of your body now weighs the amount of the food until it's digested and used as fuel or expelled from your body, right? like, if I drink 2 liter of diet coke and then weigh myself right after, i'm going to weigh more. we're on the same page here, right?

Do you think I'm an idiot? I was referring to being down on the scale the next morning as the OP mentioned.

Ah...Wait.

Sure you can eat junk food and lose weight. As your calories gets lower the volume of food you can eat from say mcdonalds is pretty small. Where as the volume of food you can get from whole non-processed foods is much larger, and more filling.

Also why eat all those chemicals? There are nearly 30+ ingredients in a mc donalds bun. Bread generally has 5 ingredients if you eat real bread. Not to mention sodium. Sodium is nasty.

But I do love mc donalds and eat it every once in a while. I am just at such low calories at the moment that junk food is not an option volume wise.

...Why would my calories get lower? They're increasing as I lose weight. I'm up to 1925 now, started at 1650. So much more room for FOOD!

Sure you can eat junk food and lose weight. As your calories gets lower the volume of food you can eat from say mcdonalds is pretty small. Where as the volume of food you can get from whole non-processed foods is much larger, and more filling.

Also why eat all those chemicals? There are nearly 30+ ingredients in a mc donalds bun. Bread generally has 5 ingredients if you eat real bread. Not to mention sodium. Sodium is nasty.

But I do love mc donalds and eat it every once in a while. I am just at such low calories at the moment that junk food is not an option volume wise.

...Why would my calories get lower? They're increasing as I lose weight. I'm up to 1925 now, started at 1650. So much more room for FOOD!

Hmm MFP suggests lower and lower calories for me as I lose weight. MFP wants me to eat around 1545 or so now. I started around 1900 calories 44 lbs ago.

He said, defiantly.

That's great for you. Some people don't want to eat pizza and ice cream, because it doesn't work for them.

Does that fact somehow affect YOUR life?

It doesn't affect my life because I know the truth. Pizza, ice cream, iguana sticks, etc may not work for some people due to a medical condition such as diabetes. However, if you are free from disease (And most of you are. Your thyroid is fine.) then it's all about the caloric deficit.

I take offense to people peddling arugula salads and spirulina tonics as the way to "be healthy" and lose weight. Desperate people arrive on forums like this and are told that hamburgers are fattening and they should only eat pancakes once and a while , which sets them up for failure.