The Woo That You Do (Or Did)

bpetrosky
bpetrosky Posts: 3,911 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
What bad weight loss plans or advice did you follow before getting onto calorie counting? How did you come to the conclusion they didn't work?

For me:
* Nutrisystem: Under the old shelf-stable plans. Tasted awful, lost a little, but not worth it. Sad cracker pizza.
* South Beach: Worked ok for a few months, but the rules were hard to follow where work had me eating out a lot and/or I couldn't keep the schedule that was recommended. Also pretty expensive for the foods you had to choose.
* 4-hour Body: Just dumb...didn't work
* Various supplements at various times. Never made a difference.
* Weight loss center: Worked great, I did lose and a lot. Also was expensive, and would have been more if I had bought all the bars and supplements and other stuff they peddled. I also realized I was eating extremely low carb and low calorie and that made me feel like crud. I felt much better once I re-upped my carb level.

While I was doing the weight loss center plan I started using MFP and realized I could still make progress while eating more than their mail plan recommended (same time I upped the carbs). After the plan, I didn't need to follow their recommendation anymore but kept with MFP.

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Replies

  • queenliz99
    queenliz99 Posts: 15,317 Member
    In college, the professor wanted us to try a 1 week fast with coffee enemas, almost crashed my car after 2nd day into an overpass. Professors are scary, I'm informing me soon to be college bound kiddo to be very wary.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w58E2S315a4
  • positivepowers
    positivepowers Posts: 902 Member
    edited April 2016
    I'm on Nutrisystem now and it's working but then, I like the food and the convenience (since I only cook for myself.)

    Oh, man, what didn't I try? Keto, Atkins, Paleo and South Beach failed because I became a really nasty person and I suspect the low carb thing isn't good for the human body, anyway. Veganism failed, or maybe I failed veganism, and Dr. Furhman's ETL diet was the grossest thing ever. I was always sneaking treats, then I would feel bad, which would lead to binging, and repeat. I was a lacto-ovo vegetarian for a while and did well on that but then I became a "junk vegetarian" and gained all of the weight back. A registered dietician put me on an ADA (American Diabetic Asociation) diet but my blood sugar never went down and I was hungry all of the time.
  • bpetrosky
    bpetrosky Posts: 3,911 Member
    Ouch @queenliz99. Glad you didn't have a serious wreck!
  • nutmegoreo
    nutmegoreo Posts: 15,532 Member
    queenliz99 wrote: »
    In college, the professor wanted us to try a 1 week fast with coffee enemas, almost crashed my car after 2nd day into an overpass. Professors are scary, I'm informing me soon to be college bound kiddo to be very wary.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w58E2S315a4

    Yikes! You gotta watch them profs... They be cray :smiley:
  • amyepdx
    amyepdx Posts: 750 Member
    edited April 2016
    Phen-Fen 1995 500 calories a day. Cut me some slack - it was for my younger sister's wedding. Luckily I wasn't on it long enough to harm myself.
    Medi-fast 2012 - no excuses for that one.
  • newheavensearth
    newheavensearth Posts: 870 Member
    Slim Fast, The Special K diet, Cabbage Soup, Green smoothie cleanse, herbal supplements, food combining, Alli.

    Weight Watchers and the ADA food exchange plan actually worked for me so I can't say they're woo. I'm here because I'm still not thrilled with WW' s new program :/
  • newheavensearth
    newheavensearth Posts: 870 Member
    ctoavs76 wrote: »
    Weight Watchers, Super low calorie eating (800 calories or less), LA Weight Loss, Jenny Craig, Atkins, The Zone, Nutrisystem, South Beach and Medifast. Phew! That's a lot. Now I'm just doing CICO. I've lost 31 pounds since November. I have another 15 to go and have recently changed my goal to lose 0.5 a week. I'm learning portion control and I'm not looking for a quick fix. I know this is a lifestyle change. I have days where I slip up, but I don't beat myself up over it. I feel like I'm just in a better place mentally this time.

    It's funny you say you feel you're in a better place mentally. I feel that, too, with calorie counting. The simplest foods are astronomically high in points now on the new WW points system and I feel guilty eating them. Now, I just pre track, weigh/ measure, and eat. No guilt! Weight Watchers did have its place in my life at one point, I just don't think it's a good fit anymore.
  • CharlieBeansmomTracey
    CharlieBeansmomTracey Posts: 7,682 Member
    I can honestly say that I have never done a diet,took pills, ive done no woo lol. this is the first time I have counted my calories and the first thing I have done to lose weight.I didnt have to work at losing when I was younger,now I do.I knew at a young age that those types of diets werent for me
  • Orphia
    Orphia Posts: 7,097 Member
    Nice thread!

    I lost weight a few times in my 20's by basically starving myself. Not good, and resolved not to do that again.

    I was opposed to diet plans, mainly for their commercialism.

    However, I put on 30 kg over 15 years, until I happened to learn about MFP from a friend last year.

    I've now lost all my excess weight, and am loving being a runner, and am the happiest I've been in my life.
  • CooCooPuff
    CooCooPuff Posts: 4,374 Member
    Innocently: Garcinia Cambogia, Shake Weight, some shoes with a weird sole that hurt my feet, and Lean Cuisines

    Actually made throw up: Buying sugar free chocolates because they were "healthy" and wouldn't make me gain. I stopped this after eating too much and throwing up in the car. I'm lucky it didn't come out the other way. :s

    Unfortunately, I was able to starve myself for a long time using calorie counting. I had gone from skipping lunch to eating 800 calories a day, with knowing how to accurately log. It was all in a journal I threw out and in an inactive Fatsecret account. My first day or so here is pretty low as well.
  • evildeadedd
    evildeadedd Posts: 108 Member
    Lots of VLCD, I have always went from way over restriction to binging. Never been much for Woo, did fall for the "gluten intolerance" for a while. The one thing I did do that I am lucky didn't kill me was working 12 to 16 hour shifts 6 days a week. I was taking probably 10 or more ephedrine gas station diet pills, and drinking a case of natty light a night. Still not sure how I lived like that for over a year.
  • RunnerGirl1402
    RunnerGirl1402 Posts: 8 Member
    Thinking running every day meant I could eat whatever I wanted. And I usually did eat around 2,500 calories per day. Not good when you're 5'2"
  • Timorous_Beastie
    Timorous_Beastie Posts: 595 Member
    Not so much woo, but when I was younger, I foolishly believed an older coworker who said, "As long as you eat more than 700 calories a day, you'll be fine." Of course, eating that little, I didn't have the energy to exercise or anything, and when I reached my goal weight, I'd also lost a lot of lean mass, and looked like crap. I'm just glad I decided I'd rather weigh more and enjoy life again, rather than continue to eat that way.

    Years later, once I learned about TDEE and my real caloric needs, I can maintain easily at 2300, and lose easily (slowly, but easily, which matters more to me for adherence) at 2000.
  • ReaderGirl3
    ReaderGirl3 Posts: 868 Member
    edited April 2016
    I've only lost weight one time, doing alternate day IF, and it worked great for me (just a fancy way of calorie counting). But, back in the day I did go through a phase of experimenting with different woe's because I was trying to find one that led to 'optimal' health, snort. I tried primal/paleo (really got sucked into MDA), vegetarian (gained weight on this one), and then I also did a few months with Dr. F's Eat to Live (which is pretty much vegetarian with extra restrictions). Shockingly, none of these restrictive woes did anything magical for my health or were sustainable past a few months :p

  • OldAssDude
    OldAssDude Posts: 1,436 Member
    First of all, "We" are the reason for success (and/or failure). Not MFP or any specific "diet plan".

    Second of all, 99.999... percent of diet plans are BS (JMO). The diet industry makes billions of dollars a year off of poor people who lack the knowledge to maintain a healthy body weight on their own, and most of them do not advise a healthy weight loss rate (that should be a red flag right off the bat).

    I was lucky enough to learn the basics of fitness and nutrition when I was in the army, and when I became obese, I had enough knowledge to know what I needed to do to get back to and maintain a healthy weight.

    I found that keeping it "slow" and "simple"is the best way. my plan was to do it over years, and not weeks or months. This allows time to develop good habits, learn how to eat smarter, and gradually reduce the bad things without shocking my system and setting myself up for failure.

    The hardest part for me was the exercise (yes, exercise). I was so out of shape and over weight that I thought I was going to die at first. But once I got to the point where I started increasing my fitness level, it slowly became the main factor in the process.

    Here is my simple plan

    don't try to lose more than 1 lb. a week
    steady state cardio for at least 30 to 60 minutes every day (you can take a day off per week if you want to)
    muscular exercise 2 to 3 times per week
    eat a variety of food to insure you get enough nutrients to keep your body healthy
    eat smart, and gradually reduce the junk foods

    once you reach your healthy body weight, you can maintain it very easily with the good habits that you have developed. You can eat that extra 500 calories a day, and reduce your exercise down to the recommended 150 minutes a week, and 1 to 2 sessions of muscular exercise (if you want to).
  • kommodevaran
    kommodevaran Posts: 17,890 Member
    Great thread! At last it "clicked" for me how I could have been so full of misconceptions, when I actually knew about calories - I understood something about calories - exactly! My knowledge was superficial and not really useful for real life. I believed that I had to eat low fat because fat had "too many" calories, and that I "couldn't" eat candy or chocolate or chips because it was too energy dense. Somehow it would eradicate all my effort. I also believed there was an "ideal" diet, not very clear to me, but I think it included celery, cottage cheese and black rye bread.

    I haven't done any spectacular diets, but I dreamed for years about liposuction, fat camp (even had wild ideas of a concept resembling WW2 concentration camps :s ) and hypnosis. I also tried, half-arsed, chromium and chitosan, and bought some other obscure "weight loss supplement" and a scary looking bottle of "fat burner" pills, neither having any effect, of course.
  • CooCooPuff
    CooCooPuff Posts: 4,374 Member
    RunnerGirl1402 wrote: »
    Thinking running every day meant I could eat whatever I wanted. And I usually did eat around 2,500 calories per day. Not good when you're 5'2"
    I know someone that's doing that right now, thought I'm not sure the exact calorie count. It's working for them because they're a heavier person, are already active at work, and aren't really able to eat during the day due to being busy.

    She keeps telling me she's fine because she runs. I can't imagine what it's going to be like during the summer.

  • JackieMarie1989jgw
    JackieMarie1989jgw Posts: 230 Member
    Tried Atkins in high school, couldn't maintain it long enough to lose. Felt like crap, low energy, head in a fog, increased migraines. I'm never doing low carb again
    In college tried to only do exercise but wasn't willing to watch what I ate. Got slightly more toned, didn't lose.
    After college tried just drinking green tea every day and changing nothing else. Yeah, that didn't work haha
    Finally started MFP 2 years ago, lost 20 lb and got to my goal weight...then immediately got pregnant.
    Now I am back and only a few pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight thanks to MFP.
  • Alluminati
    Alluminati Posts: 6,208 Member
    I tried Dexatrim in high school and thought that taking it would magically make my body not absorb calories in food (even though that's not what it advertised to do, I made that *kitten* up in my head). I tried Slimfast and Nutrisystem and gave up after 2 weeks only losing 2-3 lbs.

    I figured it was easier to just stay fat.
  • booksandchocolate12
    booksandchocolate12 Posts: 1,741 Member
    edited April 2016
    The first time I lost a significant amount of weight (30 lbs) I was in 9th grade and decided to give up junk food (candy, cookies, etc.) for Lent. Not sustainable, because I love my sweets!

    In the 90s I was totally into Suzanne Powter's "Stop the Insanity". I believe the cornerstone of her plan was not to eat anything with more than 3g of fat in it. Again, not sustainable for me.

    I've done South Beach, which worked initially. But it didn't teach me anything about portion control, and once I was able to add in the foods that were forbidden in the early phases, the weight came back on. I have no idea what it means to eat "to satisfaction". I have to weigh out a portion and eat that; I've come to terms with the fact that I'll probably always have to do that.

    I've also done Weight Watchers, which I don't really consider woo. The first time I did it was after the weight came back on when Lent was over in 9th grade, LOL. It's just calorie counting with smaller numbers (first it was "exchanges" then "points"). But I got tired of paying for it, hence my arrival here on MFP.

    I had a mother who was always thin and never had to try to lose weight. But she had a lot of common sense and was able to steer me away from any of the crazy fads that a lot of people fall victim to.
  • rsleighty
    rsleighty Posts: 214 Member
    Atkins. Stayed on it for about three days. Felt worse than I ever had with the exception of when i had the full blown flu. Threw it out the window. Any diet that tells me I can't eat an apple is for the birds!!!!!
  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
    I never really tried to lose weight before apart from the occasional fad diet ala cabbage soup and its ilk when my friends did them just for fun, so I'm afraid I don't have and particular diet woo under my belt.

    It wasn't for weight loss per se, but when I was a in my late teens I bought into this whole "water fasting is the ultimate health elixir" things. I came out of it with intestinal obstruction and anemia. This whole kick lasted about 5 or so months of short 1-3 day fasts and the occasional 5 day fast which weren't that bad. It's when I decided to go 2 weeks that all hell broke loose.

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