Unhelpful advice by experts
kcd1961
Posts: 126 Member
Although my day job is as an "expert" (Occupational Therapist/Counsellor) - one of the things I've learned from my own weight loss/chronic disease management journey - is that a lot of stuff that seems accepted just doesn't work for me. I'll share my favourite bad advice and look forward to others experience. As I say to my clients, "If it works, keep doing it, if it doesn't, try something different".
The myth: Have a good breakfast, your brain needs carbs to function well, it will stop you getting hungry through the day and overeating - The reality I found that a good, healthy carb (low GI) loaded breakfast made my brain foggy and set me up for behavioural failure. I was hungry all day long. My brain works best on my fast days when all I have for breakfast is a home made cappuccino. Eating less in the day and having "left over" calories that I "have to eat" at the end of the day has prevented late night bingeing and has produced a much more workable system. (This breaks the "Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper" myth - for me).
The myth: Have a good breakfast, your brain needs carbs to function well, it will stop you getting hungry through the day and overeating - The reality I found that a good, healthy carb (low GI) loaded breakfast made my brain foggy and set me up for behavioural failure. I was hungry all day long. My brain works best on my fast days when all I have for breakfast is a home made cappuccino. Eating less in the day and having "left over" calories that I "have to eat" at the end of the day has prevented late night bingeing and has produced a much more workable system. (This breaks the "Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper" myth - for me).
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I hate that saying! I truly loathe it. And "don't eat after 6 pm." I spent too much time and energy fighting nighttime binges. It turns out all I needed to do was acknowledge that preference and feed it accordingly.
ETA: I eat all of my calories--except for coffee--between 4-10:30 pm. And I've lost 35 pounds mostly sticking to that plan.0 -
I can't even look at food in the morning. Also "Eat a smaller meal every 3 hours to optimise your metabolism." Keeps me thinking about food all day (in a bad way).0
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"it's not rocket science, just eat less and exercise more" - maybe not from experts, but I see this often enough, and it makes my blood boil! My usual response is: "great idea, oh and by the way, if you want to be a billionaire here's a tip for you - it's not rocket science, just reduce your costs and increase revenue's - simple!"0
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I like a good breakfast, but I find by pushing it back 2 hours or so after I get up - so eating at 9am rather than 7am - it helps me better control my hunger and blood sugar all day. If I eat at 7am, I'm eating lunch by 11am, snacking by 3pm, and am an unholy amount of hungry by 5:30 so snack again before dinner. I also like to save calories for about 8-9pm if I can, as I always want something to nibble then. I think accounting for your individual habits in your plans is really important - no point trying to force yourself into a way of eating that is really unnatural, when just reducing calories or trying to make healthier choices over junk food can be tiring enough.0
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The fact is you don't need an expert to lose weight: just eat less calories than you burn on a regular basis.
"experts" make it complicated because they want to make money out of it. But the info is simple and available for free. Great tools (like mfp) are also available for free. All you have to supply is patience and sticking power...0 -
Eat when hungry is the best way, I do like to eat breakfast or brunch now though as it works for me and controlling calories. We are unique for a reason, what works well for one doesn't for another, personal trial and error, I agree with OP0
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reesrachel00 wrote: »Eat when hungry is the best way, I do like to eat breakfast or brunch now though as it works for me and controlling calories. We are unique for a reason, what works well for one doesn't for another, personal trial and error, I agree with OP
What works is a calorie deficit. How you achieve it on a regular basis is a matter of personal taste.0 -
reesrachel00 wrote: »Eat when hungry is the best way, I do like to eat breakfast or brunch now though as it works for me and controlling calories. We are unique for a reason, what works well for one doesn't for another, personal trial and error, I agree with OP
What works is a calorie deficit. How you achieve it on a regular basis is a matter of personal taste.
yes I agree, eat less move more in whatever way suits the individual
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herrspoons wrote: »reesrachel00 wrote: »Eat when hungry is the best way, I do like to eat breakfast or brunch now though as it works for me and controlling calories. We are unique for a reason, what works well for one doesn't for another, personal trial and error, I agree with OP
What works is a calorie deficit. How you achieve it on a regular basis is a matter of personal taste.
This.
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Food racism. What did white food ever do to hurt you so much?
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"it doesn't matter WHAT you eat as long as it fits in your macros and you are in a deficit." maybe true for some, but being diabetic, this plan for me doesn't work. The traditional food pyramid way of eating also fails me. If I am at 75 carbs a day or less, I feel great, don't want to snack, lose weight and turn in healthy blood work results. While extreme anything has down falls, I have gained and lost dozens of times over the years. I am finally reaching success staying away from flour and refined sugar and most starches.0
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toofatnomore wrote: »"it doesn't matter WHAT you eat as long as it fits in your macros and you are in a deficit." maybe true for some, but being diabetic, this plan for me doesn't work. The traditional food pyramid way of eating also fails me. If I am at 75 carbs a day or less, I feel great, don't want to snack, lose weight and turn in healthy blood work results. While extreme anything has down falls, I have gained and lost dozens of times over the years. I am finally reaching success staying away from flour and refined sugar and most starches.
Excepting medical conditions. Then you have to follow the advice of your healthcare professional.
This should go without saying.
It's like when someone starts a thread saying how much they love cheese. You always get one person who has to say: Not for me - I'm lactose intolerant. I mean, yeah...0 -
toofatnomore wrote: »"it doesn't matter WHAT you eat as long as it fits in your macros and you are in a deficit." maybe true for some, but being diabetic, this plan for me doesn't work. The traditional food pyramid way of eating also fails me. If I am at 75 carbs a day or less, I feel great, don't want to snack, lose weight and turn in healthy blood work results. While extreme anything has down falls, I have gained and lost dozens of times over the years. I am finally reaching success staying away from flour and refined sugar and most starches.
But if you need to eat 75 g carbs or less a day, exceeding that DOESN'T fit your macros.
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kommodevaran wrote: »toofatnomore wrote: »"it doesn't matter WHAT you eat as long as it fits in your macros and you are in a deficit." maybe true for some, but being diabetic, this plan for me doesn't work. The traditional food pyramid way of eating also fails me. If I am at 75 carbs a day or less, I feel great, don't want to snack, lose weight and turn in healthy blood work results. While extreme anything has down falls, I have gained and lost dozens of times over the years. I am finally reaching success staying away from flour and refined sugar and most starches.
But if you need to eat 75 g carbs or less a day, exceeding that DOESN'T fit your macros.
Lol!0 -
I was told not to count calories as it leads to obsession, but to try and stick to about 1200 calories a day. How on earth do you stick to such a low number of calories without counting them? And this was from the same medical practitioner!0
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"5 fruits and 5 veg a day." If I actually did this I'd be eating nothing but fruit and veg all day long and I'd be blowing my sugar/carb intake completely.
I've settled for 2 large servings of veg and 1 of fruit - and that seems to work out ok...
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Cut out carbs!
Yeah great, I'll lose weight quickly but if I ever touch a carb again I'll balloon. I had one day where my carb intake was about 30g and I nearly passed out.0 -
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lisaw19855 wrote: »Cut out carbs!
Yeah great, I'll lose weight quickly but if I ever touch a carb again I'll balloon. I had one day where my carb intake was about 30g and I nearly passed out.
Not necessary.
And I'm pretty sure 30g of carbs in one day probably wasn't the reason you almost passed out. You're probably crash dieting. And no carbs won't make you balloon up, over eating will.
Not crash dieting at all thanks, a pretty bold assumption. Minimum is around 1400 calories a day, I simply didn't fuel my body correctly for the activity I was doing which dropped my blood sugar too low.
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The myth: Have a good breakfast, your brain needs carbs to function well, it will stop you getting hungry through the day and overeating
kcd1961 - Yes! Since trying Intermittent Fasting, I have come to realize that I don't need to eat breakfast first thing in the morning (I do have my coffee with unsweet almond milk). It was hard at first to skip breakfast. Everything I have read tells me that skipping breakfast will lead to obesity........wrong! So far I eat between the hours of 11am and 7pm. And it works for me. I've lost weight and body fat, oh and lowered my cholesterol! Yay! Never be afraid to step outside of the box
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ianblackburn wrote: »"it's not rocket science, just eat less and exercise more" - maybe not from experts, but I see this often enough, and it makes my blood boil! My usual response is: "great idea, oh and by the way, if you want to be a billionaire here's a tip for you - it's not rocket science, just reduce your costs and increase revenue's - simple!"
Haha, love this!!!
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I had never sought the advise of "experts" for the purpose of loosing fat so I don't have any anadotes to share from them.
When I decided to loose the fat it had aquired in recent years I came to MFP and started reading in the Success form and took my cues from the folks who have done the work to succeed.
But now that I am here I see such such horrible advise given by Internet experts repeated over and over. you just have to chuckle. Except it is not funny and hopefully people looking for help don't take the advise. But some will as the advise is usually the easy road. Stuff like, " eat more calories " if you are not loosing the weight because you are " in starvation mode " Arrrggg0 -
I get a lot of pressure from my Dr to lower my cholesterol, because the total is 220. However, I lift weights A LOT and workout everyday (I do Crossfit) My HDL is up around 80 while most people's is hardly above 30. My LDL is in the high end of the acceptable range and my triglycerides are well below where they need to be. Yet instead of looking at the whole picture, I get told to eat better and drop my cholesterol. I also have a BMI that puts me in the slightly overweight category. But I am well under the American average for female percentage body fat and wear a size 8 jean that fits loosely. I wish medical professionals would look at the whole picture instead of giving generic advice.0
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My personal belief is that the average MD knows about as much about healthy weight loss as most of us do.0
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If you aren't hungry in the morning, it is a sign that your metabolism is sluggish. After 8 hours of not eating, you should be hungry!0
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My family doctor was sure my weight gain could be explained by drinking too many fruit/sugar drinks. All I had at the time was a half-cup orange juice in the morning. Guess what? I gave up the juice and I still gained weight.
Now, I have had to make changes to lose weight (smaller snacks, calorie counting) but there was no easy fix to be found.0 -
I've gotten the 'keep doing what you are doing' spiel and while is does generally apply it is not what you want to hear sometimes. I am not sure why, I think sometimes we what to be told what to do that way if it doesn't work we have someone to fault
But you are right there is no one way to do things. I get tired of hearing about how hard it is to lose weight when you are short - more than likely you have always been short and whatever it takes for 'you' to lose weight is what works for you. Trust me, tall people have issues as well.
When to eat and what to eat will vary for each person like leaves on a tree, each of us has to find what works for us in our lives. The breakfast that works for me is eggs and fruit.0 -
lisaw19855 wrote: »Cut out carbs!
Yeah great, I'll lose weight quickly but if I ever touch a carb again I'll balloon. I had one day where my carb intake was about 30g and I nearly passed out.
Not necessary.
And I'm pretty sure 30g of carbs in one day probably wasn't the reason you almost passed out. You're probably crash dieting. And no carbs won't make you balloon up, over eating will.
I *think* she's saying she can't do low carb, and when she tried, she almost passed out. Maybe I'm not reading it right.
For me the biggest myth that I was THRILLED to see dispelled (and I credit with much of my 69 pounds lost) is that you can still eat the things you love - you don't have to cut out certain foods, or eat a specific way to have success.0 -
ianblackburn wrote: »"it's not rocket science, just eat less and exercise more" - maybe not from experts, but I see this often enough, and it makes my blood boil! My usual response is: "great idea, oh and by the way, if you want to be a billionaire here's a tip for you - it's not rocket science, just reduce your costs and increase revenue's - simple!"
These are not analogous. Reducing costs and increasing revenues will both rely on things outside of your individual control.
Eating less and exercises more are both things that you have 100% control over, all day, every day.
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