eat right and no need to count calories
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deviboy1592 wrote: »EvgeniZyntx wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »
I completely disagree with this. There are too many high calorie choices that could be considered "healthy". If I ate grass fed steak, eggs, almonds/almond butter, milk, avocados, coconut oil, bananas, natural peanut butter, oats, granola, etc I could easily eat above my maintenance, and my maintenance is over 3000 calories. Someone with a smaller maintenance could do it even easier.When I began, I was advised to eat healthy, exercise and not worry about anything else. I had special restrictions in addition to that, but could eat all the fruits and veggies my little heart desired.
Without logging, counting, weighing myself or doing any of the things that are so common for weight loss, I lost my first forty pounds. I was shocked when I found out how much I'd lost. Since my clothes got bigger and too big, I knew I'd lost, but was FLOORED by forty pounds. I literally got off and back on the scale and considered that I might've been weighed wrong in the first place, but it would've required like a dozen people doing it wrong in six or eight different places, so there was no error.
If you eat only the healthiest of foods - all healthy, all the time - it's really hard to overeat. You'll see people here asking about how to get to 1200 eating only the healthiest of food. While it's theoretically possible, it would be very difficult to gain weight eating All Healthy, All The Time.
I guess, but really, who's going to have a steak-egg-avocado-peanut butter sandwich?
Most people tend not to eat as much when all they eat is home-cooked meals.
Fact is, when people mostly ate nothing but home-cooked meals, fewer people were overweight. Fact is, wherever the fast food industry takes hold, obesity rates rise in previously normal-weight populations.
I gained all the weight I recently lost without eating fast food. For the most significant portion of it I mostly ate home cooked food, although I also went out to eat about as often as I do now. The restaurants I go to are mostly the seasonal, local kind, so no more "processed" than what I cook at home.
It's really easy to eat high calories when cooking at home. It's also reasonably easy to cook in a way that's not high calorie--if you care and bother to do so. It's no magic pill against gaining weight, though.
In fact, I'd bet the main benefit of home cooking as a protection against getting fat is not that the food is somehow less caloric than much of the "processed" stuff you can buy (which varies widely in all respects, including number of calories and how nutrient dense it is, such that generalizing about it makes no sense). Instead, it's that it takes work to cook something, whereas if you buy stuff it's easier to snack constantly.
that's quite possible. i'm thinking of france, again, though, with their lower obesity rates (compared to many western countries) but high-cal deliciousness. their children are thinner, too, and i doubt they're doing the bulk of the cooking and shopping. the kids are gaining, though, and it's thought the fact that they're snacking more does have something to do with it (vs. 3 squares), along with fast food.
Snacking is an issue when it adds calories (usually) not the actual frequency.
I live in France. Snacking is and has always been an integral part of the cultural make up here. It even has a name. Le quatre heure - what used to kids get when coming home. Children here have a pause at school and get to eat a snack in school (historically might have been the first meal).
The reasons for the rise of obesity are multi factorial - yes, availability of calorie dense food is probably a factor but so is the decline in activity level, increase in transport, etc.
Personally, when in France it is easy to see fast food on every street corner (kebab, burgers, what not) in major cities but a large part of our own cooking and shopping is oriented to open air markets.
What kind of foods are on the rise that could be causing the increase of weight gain?
Availability of calorie rich food is only one factor. For example, pastries of all sorts, baguette are a major staple in local diet and have been present for years in the traditional boulangerie. But the cost of these - relative to cost of living has apparently gone down.
You want to focus on some evil food but it doesn't work like that - in a demographic process it's always multifactorial. For example, my two youngest daughters eat snacks - packaged cookies to apple sauce, mousse au chocolat, croissants to fruit yogurts and what not. They aren't fat. Partially because the amount of rich food they eat is also balanced by a majority of home prepared meals and balanced eating. I also have a picky eater who dislikes sweets, but would eat pasta until she exploded. We watch that. Another reason they aren't overweight is that their activity level is set to 11 (running, fencing, circus, school sport activity, climbing, cycling and getting to school on foot).
Regional genetics also play roles in height and weight...
From your posts you seem to continue to focus on some sort of diabolical food list but it just isn't so. Having said that, it's also fine if that works for you - treating certain foods as "bad" or "unhealthy" has been a very successful weightloss method. You restrict out those foods that are calorie dense and voila, one loses weight. It works. Of course, the issue is then is it maintainable?
Personally, I find it to be the wrong focus for the long term. For me, it's more about an approach that allows me to eat a large variety of anything (I'm about 70% local produce and market purchased goods, probably eat too much cured ham) but assure its aligned with an activity level that focuses on having a strong active body across a variety of fields. Diet without consideration of activity has led me down the path of either remaining overweight or crash and burn when I don't feed myself enough.
In all that, overall context matters more than any single food type.0 -
The difference is as Izzwoz said above. My husband can have the most luscious gorgeous delicious looking pizza in front of him with everything he likes and made just right (and he likes the high calorie toppings!!) and he will eat until he is satisfied no more no less. He has maintained throughout his adult life a slim 60-65kg weight. Me on the other hand give me a burger (because I hate pizza) and I will eat till I'm stuffed or possibly even until I feel sick which may not seem like allot to bing eaters but a large double whopper meal is ALLOT of food for me. I have a thing about leaving food on plates which stems back from the old "eat all of your dinner or you get no dessert" and mum would feed us HUGE plates of food (3 little girls and we were fed like teenaged boys who played sports all day). I distinctly remember going to mcdonalds and ordering 2 burgers, thick shake, large fries and a sundae and no-one raising an eyebrow. Now do I blame my parents? No, I'm an adult I can and should be making these decisions for myself but I find it hard to decide when I am full let alone satisfied and quite often I only stop eating when my plate is empty. The only way I get around this is to portion things out before hand, use smaller plates/bowls etc. Intuitive eating doesn't work for me.
My point from the novel above is that it is absolutely possible for SOME people but I think that they are few and far between especially with serving sizes, plates, restaurant serves all ballooning making judging how much you are actually consuming harder.0 -
I've read in a number of books and articles, one today, that if you are eating right (or healthy or clean or however you call it) then you don't need to measure food or count calories. Since this is a calorie-counting site I assume you have not found this to be the case? Is it likely one will continue to carry excess fat even when eating healthy, if calories aren't controlled too?
Riiiiiight.
A junkie will believe anything in support of their habit. Food junkies are not excluded.
Data point: My grandma ate virtually nothing that didn't come off their land. Garden fresh everything, orchard fruit/juices, vinyard juicr/wine, farm fresh eggs, you name it - it was raised/grown organically in their yard and was "healthy"... she died early from kidney failure. Complication from decades of Type II Diabetes due to being 450+ pounds during her 30s, 40s, and 50s.
You can overeat anything. Even good "healthy" food.0 -
If you have just started here and you are overweight, just eating healthily has probably not worked for you.0
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When I began, I was advised to eat healthy, exercise and not worry about anything else. I had special restrictions in addition to that, but could eat all the fruits and veggies my little heart desired.
Without logging, counting, weighing myself or doing any of the things that are so common for weight loss, I lost my first forty pounds. I was shocked when I found out how much I'd lost. Since my clothes got bigger and too big, I knew I'd lost, but was FLOORED by forty pounds. I literally got off and back on the scale and considered that I might've been weighed wrong in the first place, but it would've required like a dozen people doing it wrong in six or eight different places, so there was no error.
If you eat only the healthiest of foods - all healthy, all the time - it's really hard to overeat. You'll see people here asking about how to get to 1200 eating only the healthiest of food. While it's theoretically possible, it would be very difficult to gain weight eating All Healthy, All The Time.
I was a raw vegan for a time. It's a very healthy, delicious way to eat.
It's also full of nuts, seeds, dates, and avocados.
Now, I moderated myself from going crazy on some of the food that I found particularly delicious, and trust me, it was hard, because the food was tasty. I could easily have gained.
The only reason I didn't gain is because I had learned, by that point in my life, how to be moderate.
The one thing I did not do was lose.
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I used MFP to religiously log everything I ate for more than 3 months last Fall, then I fell off the wagon when I got weary of doing it! Right now I'm eating "as if" counting and it works well if I stick with the program. Not so well if I overeat. Funny about that.0
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lemurcat12 wrote: »
I completely disagree with this. There are too many high calorie choices that could be considered "healthy". If I ate grass fed steak, eggs, almonds/almond butter, milk, avocados, coconut oil, bananas, natural peanut butter, oats, granola, etc I could easily eat above my maintenance, and my maintenance is over 3000 calories. Someone with a smaller maintenance could do it even easier.When I began, I was advised to eat healthy, exercise and not worry about anything else. I had special restrictions in addition to that, but could eat all the fruits and veggies my little heart desired.
Without logging, counting, weighing myself or doing any of the things that are so common for weight loss, I lost my first forty pounds. I was shocked when I found out how much I'd lost. Since my clothes got bigger and too big, I knew I'd lost, but was FLOORED by forty pounds. I literally got off and back on the scale and considered that I might've been weighed wrong in the first place, but it would've required like a dozen people doing it wrong in six or eight different places, so there was no error.
If you eat only the healthiest of foods - all healthy, all the time - it's really hard to overeat. You'll see people here asking about how to get to 1200 eating only the healthiest of food. While it's theoretically possible, it would be very difficult to gain weight eating All Healthy, All The Time.
I guess, but really, who's going to have a steak-egg-avocado-peanut butter sandwich?
Most people tend not to eat as much when all they eat is home-cooked meals.
Fact is, when people mostly ate nothing but home-cooked meals, fewer people were overweight. Fact is, wherever the fast food industry takes hold, obesity rates rise in previously normal-weight populations.
I gained all the weight I recently lost without eating fast food. For the most significant portion of it I mostly ate home cooked food, although I also went out to eat about as often as I do now. The restaurants I go to are mostly the seasonal, local kind, so no more "processed" than what I cook at home.
It's really easy to eat high calories when cooking at home. It's also reasonably easy to cook in a way that's not high calorie--if you care and bother to do so. It's no magic pill against gaining weight, though.
In fact, I'd bet the main benefit of home cooking as a protection against getting fat is not that the food is somehow less caloric than much of the "processed" stuff you can buy (which varies widely in all respects, including number of calories and how nutrient dense it is, such that generalizing about it makes no sense). Instead, it's that it takes work to cook something, whereas if you buy stuff it's easier to snack constantly.
that's quite possible. i'm thinking of france, again, though, with their lower obesity rates (compared to many western countries) but high-cal deliciousness. their children are thinner, too, and i doubt they're doing the bulk of the cooking and shopping. the kids are gaining, though, and it's thought the fact that they're snacking more does have something to do with it (vs. 3 squares), along with fast food.
I think the bigger reasons are the differences between our food cultures. When the US used to eat according to our own traditional eating patterns, we weren't obese. Pretty much any cultural patterns are fine, so long as they exist and tend to limit when and how people eat. In the US, though, we've largely lost though--people don't seem to have an innate understanding of what dinner looks like or when we eat or how much, at least lots of people do not. I think this is far more related to the obesity issue than the fact that McD exists or whatever.
Also, of course, we walk less than the French, which can't be dismissed.
These active conversations are kind of getting intertwined in an interesting way, so I can't help but think about the "clean" debate elsewhere. The French, of course, are a decent illustration of what I was talking about in the other thread--they don't "eat clean" as that is defined here, or might be defined by those whose ideas of "clean" or "healthy" is low calorie--for just one example, cheese. (I think we'd be healthier in the US if we focused on eating really good cheese and not the lowest calorie cheese possible or deciding that cheese is the devil so must be eliminated.) Instead, they get (on average) much more balanced meals than we do, focusing on nutrient dense foods, etc., without eliminating those things we demonize. It's a much healthier approach and I think what a lot of the pro moderation people would like to emulate (well, me, anyway).
When I speak of snacking in the US I'm not talking about eating any particular number of meals or times, which does not matter. I'm talking about the ease of just eating constantly all day or for whatever reason. I think that where food is imbedded in cultural rituals people tend not to overeat regularly. Where it's not, we do, especially as for many people that causes it to get detached from real hunger too.
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Healthy eating includes watchingcholesterol, sodium, fat content and sticking to lean, white meats. You won't be able to eat too many of those eggs sticking to All Healthy, All The Time.
I completely disagree with this. There are too many high calorie choices that could be considered "healthy". If I ate grass fed steak, eggs, almonds/almond butter, milk, avocados, coconut oil, bananas, natural peanut butter, oats, granola, etc I could easily eat above my maintenance, and my maintenance is over 3000 calories. Someone with a smaller maintenance could do it even easier.When I began, I was advised to eat healthy, exercise and not worry about anything else. I had special restrictions in addition to that, but could eat all the fruits and veggies my little heart desired.
Without logging, counting, weighing myself or doing any of the things that are so common for weight loss, I lost my first forty pounds. I was shocked when I found out how much I'd lost. Since my clothes got bigger and too big, I knew I'd lost, but was FLOORED by forty pounds. I literally got off and back on the scale and considered that I might've been weighed wrong in the first place, but it would've required like a dozen people doing it wrong in six or eight different places, so there was no error.
If you eat only the healthiest of foods - all healthy, all the time - it's really hard to overeat. You'll see people here asking about how to get to 1200 eating only the healthiest of food. While it's theoretically possible, it would be very difficult to gain weight eating All Healthy, All The Time.
I'm not saying you couldn't gain weight eating whatever you choose to eat, just that people sometimes have a really hard time hitting 1200 when doing All Healthy, All The Time.
But I respect your opinion and think the boards are better when there are multiple opinions posted. Not trying to start a big fight, just clarify.
Why would non-lean meats not be healthy? Does that make fish not healthy? As was pointed out, nuts (and fish) are very healthy in most people's eyes but they are very calorie (fat) dense.
Bigger picture must be examined, not single items as you are eating them.
I'm just getting into eating more fish. I had 4 oz flounder today. It was only 80 calories according to mfp. not exactly all that calorie dense. am i missing something here?
IME, most fish is pretty low calorie, even salmon and other fattier fish. It varies a lot, though. (I don't focus on "lean meats" particularly and usually eat my chicken with the skin, so maybe my idea of what's low is distorted, however.)0 -
I watch an obesity show once where a 600+ pound guys gained 2 pounds. The doctor assumed he was bad with his diet. The man said all he ate was oranges the past 2 days. The doctor asked how many oranges. The man said he ate 54 oranges a day. Healthy food but gained weight.0
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You can still eat too much of healthy foods. My husband and I have this debate every day, as he claims he isn't losing weight even though he eats the same things that I do. Today, he had a bowl of oatmeal with granola and fruit that actually overflowed the bowl, while I measure all my portions.0
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I logged every bite of food for the first 2 years of my weight loss journey. I realized I didn't know serving sizes so it really helped me out. Now I don't keep track of anything because I can basically estimate my calories for the day and am not off by much when I do check myself. I still eat out occasionally but I try to pick healthy foods because after staying away from fatty stuff for so long, it doesn't sit well with me if you know what I mean lol... Good luck!0
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Your definition of healthy includes sticking to lean, white, meats. That's not everyone's definition of healthy. I happen to think eating salmon, mackerel, steak, lamb, avocado, almonds, etc is perfectly healthy. This is an inherent problem with trying to "eat healthy". There is no definition of what "healthy" is. I also find no reason to pay much attention to sodium. I do not have hypertension or kidney disease and until I do, I find no problems with eating twice the RDA for sodium some days. Someone who has moderate to severe hypertension really aught to watching their sodium. While it's not necessarily "unhealthy" for me to eat a lot of sodium, it can be quite "unhealthy" for someone else too. This is why it is an exercise in futility to classify individual foods as clean and dirty, or healthy and unhealthy. It's completely subjective and in the end, it's how those foods fit together in a total diet and how that total diet complements the individuals needs that matter. [/quote]
^^THIS0 -
"You can eat too much of "Healthy" food too!"
Yeah, ok. I dare some one on here to try eating 2000 calories worth of apples. Then try eating 2000 calories worth of Krispey Kreme and tell me the two foods are the same.
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54 oranges wow. Goes to show you need a balanced nutritious diet.0
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thecrushinator wrote: »"You can eat too much of "Healthy" food too!"
Yeah, ok. I dare some one on here to try eating 2000 calories worth of apples. Then try eating 2000 calories worth of Krispey Kreme and tell me the two foods are the same.
Calorie-wise, they are... Eating 2000 calories of donuts = gain weight.... Eating 2000 calories of apples ALSO = weight gain, if your maintenance calories are less than 2000. In terms of weight loss/gain, if you eat more calories than your body burns in a day, you will gain weight... Regardless of WHAT those foods are. No one here is arguing that the macronutrient/micronutrient breakdown of those foods are different. But in terms of weight loss/gain, it doesn't matter WHERE the calories come from.
So yes, if you eat too many calories from "healthy" foods, you will gain weight from that too.0 -
thecrushinator wrote: »"You can eat too much of "Healthy" food too!"
Yeah, ok. I dare some one on here to try eating 2000 calories worth of apples. Then try eating 2000 calories worth of Krispey Kreme and tell me the two foods are the same.
Red herring post. The person you are quoting isn't talkng about stuffing your face with some hypothetical meal no one would eat but the fact that her husband is gaining weight "eating healthy".
Ps - I could never eat 10 Krispey Kremes.0 -
I find that idea really funny -I got obese off eating grapes, grilled chicken, and other "healthy" stuff, and I had difficulties losing weight the first time, because I sucked at accurately measuring and logging (I did a lot of eyeballing portions). For a snack, I would fill a 3-cup bowl with grapes (around 300 calories) but think that I ate 1 cup of grapes (100 calories) and log it as 1 cup of grapes. Inaccurately measuring and logging that one snack destroyed 200 calories of my intended deficit, and more measuring mistakes made throughout the day could easily destroy the rest of my deficit and cause me to be in a calorie surplus (gaining weight).0
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No matter what foods your diet consists of, if you are eating too many calories, you aren't eating right or eating healthy.
So, in essence, the statement "eat right and you don't need to count calories" is correct, though misleading.0
This discussion has been closed.
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