Atkins, Fast Metabolism, Weight Watchers,... which one to do?

Patttience wrote: »

You don't need to follow any of those diets at all. Tailor your diet to suit yourself or try all of them in series and take what you like from them.

Here's why i don't think you should do them and here's some of my tips.

So many diets out there!! No idea what to choose or just count calories??? I need to lose 30 pounds before I turn 50 in August. Suggestions would be great. Thank you.

First if you mean August next year, that's a hellofa lot of time to lose those 30 pounds. You can do this easily. I have more than 30 pounds this year.

Ok so what i don't like about weight watchers. First i must say i haven't done weight watchers and what i know is what the average person knows. What i don't like it is that it seems to encourage you to eat whatever you want. It seems to be mainly about portion control but not so much about food content. The food they sell is bad. Low fat is wrong wrong wrong. Don't go there. And just because its called WW doesn't mean those desserts are a good idea. what is probably helpful in WW is the support. But do you really need it when you have forums. Also i don't like it that you have to pay to belong. As one commentator said these systems may not be designed for you to fail but their business survives because their program fails. People lose the weight and then most pile it back on. Why? Because they haven't learnt how to eat properly. And they haven't learnt how to diet properly.

Next. Fast Metabolism. Never heard of it. It may have some useful element to it that i don't know because i know nothing about the diet but generally they are probably selling you a myth. Basically when you cut down on calories your metabolism will slow a little bit. If you cut down a lot over the long term it will slow a lot more. I don't think you can speed it up by food choices. On the other hand, if they are training you with exercise, then this will increase your metabolism but can you sustain this indefinitely. I am against the idea of relying on exercise to lose weight and there is plenty of research out there to prove it. Exercise is for health and general fitness, not for weightloss.

Atkins. I have done six weeks of Atkins. There are some great things about atkins/low carb and some pitfalls to watch out for. Basically though you don't need to do it unless you have metabolic syndrome, a great deal of weight to lose, diabetic, or just love meat. For all of us it does seem it is better to reduce our carbohydrates and we should become aware of this. This is the latest view from most diet scientistst. We've been taught for 30 or more years to cut fat and eat more carbs. This turns out to be wrong. You can research into that yourself. There's plenty out there on the subject.

When you cut carbs, you will suffer less hunger. If you cut carbs you need to increase fat for energy otherwise you will be sluggish. You do not need to eat a lot of fat if you only cut carbs modestly but you should monitor these alterations to your diet using calorie counting and macro counting. I recommend a site phlaunt.com which has a nutrition calculator. It will help you determine which numbers to aim for.

Another good thing about trying low carb is that it will widen your food choices in some areas to include more nuts and seeds, more cheese, teach you how to use cream and the like in moderation. That said, vegetables are important as in every diet out there. Vegetables are the key to weightloss. And fruit in my opinion.

The downside of atkins is the induction phase. I don't personally recommend it. And if you do it, don't do it for more than two weeks. You want to get your food choices back up to include as much as possible as soon as possible otherwise you will probably quit.

There are other pitfalls. And if you do atkins, i cannot insist strongly enough that you read books about how to do it and don't just launch yourself into it, not knowing what you are doing.

My personal experience is that ketosis is not so important really but lowering carbs to around 100 a day was great. At 100 a day i had to cut out bread and pasta most days and when i did eat, i would have to make sure the position was small so as not to increase carbs too much or to sacrifice important fruit and vegetable allowance.

Paleo is similar to atkins but don't believe the hype about eating as our ancestors did. That's just a marketing ploy and incorrect.

I've already written too much i think but here's my tips.

Reduce calories only enough to get the scale moving down. This will help you avoid hunger.
Cut back on carbs and especially sweet carbs. Maximum 6tsp sugar per day in total from all foods. That is refined sugar.
Maximise fruit and vegetables.
Eat full cream dairy, not low fat.
Cook! Get organised in the kitchen. Make your food enjoyable so that you can sustain it in the long long term. Here is where fat comes in.
Minimise processed foods.
Don't worry too much about exercise. Move more if you can but exercise is not the answer.
Stress and low mood make people hungry. Deal with these problems asap and effectively. You need to maintain a happy and optimistic mindset. I go find a counsellor when i have a problem I can't deal with.
WEight often. But don't freak out by the ups and downs of the scale. Its water and it will fluctuate a lot for many reasons. Ignore that. This is why i prefer to weigh daily.
Log your food religiously. Do it in a spreadsheet so its easy to go back and see what you've been doing. Also log your weight.
Use a TDEE calculator. The mfp calculator works fine if you are leading a sedentary lifestyle.
Eat high fibre foods.
Cook with cold processed extra virgin olive oil. Its the healthiest oil. Ignore the hype about coconut oil. if you like the taste, fine, eat it. If you don't, don't bother. Taste matters.
Drink water. But coffee and tea are not bad. Minimise alcohol. Avoid fruit juice.
Learn how to live without much sugar in your life. If you quit sugar in your tea and coffee, its easy.
Avoid hunger during the day. Going to bed a little hungry is good because your body will burn fat off overnight.
Try the 5:2 fasting diet near the end of your diet when things get a bit slow. Its a fun and useful thing to know how to do. Check out the fast diet website. I did it for 2 months. I stopped it when my mood got a bit low but now i do a one day fast here and there if i feel like it.

Good luck. Your goal is easy and very achievable.

Calliope610 wrote: »

I do the ElMoMoLiHeWaRu diet.

Eat less, move more, lift heavy, walk/run. Seems to work great for me.