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What commonly given MFP Forum advice do you personally disagree with?
Replies
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bobsanders1 wrote: »deannalfisher wrote: »bobsanders1 wrote: »UsE a fOoD ScALe
why do you disagree with this?
Because most people here believe its the be all end all of weight loss. Haven't weighted a single ounce of food in 6 months and doing just fine.
Maybe for skinny people trying to "lose weight" it may help but those of us with a ton to drop its unnecessary and a waste of time. As long as your mindful of portion sizes it does the same job.
IDK if I'd go that far, maybe we're in different threads or are reading from a different tone but usually when I see a food scale brought up it's usually in the context of:
My weight loss has stopped...I'm in a deficit but I'm just not losing...or...I'm eating 1200 calories but just can't lose any weight.
---Do you weigh and measure all of your food?
No, I guess or just use the bar-code scanner...but I'm totally eating healthy.
---Check out a food scale, odds are you're intake numbers aren't accurate and you're eating more than you think.
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Well, maybe my biases and projections and experiences are stronger influences for me than I realize. I've made what I believe to be a reasonable point. I also see (and respect) the counter points being made by most of you - they certainly hold water. I enjoy good, thoughtful discussions like these, and I will try to be more cognizant of my own tendencies going forward... thank you for your thoughts.
Edit: we cross-posted, so maybe this is moot now, but in furtherance of possible conversation I'll leave it.
Are you saying that you believe that you are constantly told by MFP that you should ignore nutrition?
I'm curious how your biases -- as mentioned by you -- come into this.
From what you'd said here -- and forgive me if I get this wrong, I'm trying to be accurate to what I recall -- you don't eat the greatest diet and realize that, but struggle with food choice for reasons other than knowledge (emotional issues, habit, stuff like that). How does the advice on MFP play into that? I would agree that people are often told that if they are struggling and need to lose that just focusing on calories is a way to lose (which is different from saying that nutrition does not matter).
I personally think nutrition is very important, it's easier for me to focus on that than calories, and easier for me to control calories if I am already focusing on nutrition and exercise. But I recognize that we all come to this from different places and that I enjoy thinking about nutrition and cooking and love vegetables and don't really like fast food isn't the case for everyone (or the be-all, end-all about nutrition), and so making baby steps can be helpful, or even just focusing on calories (which will naturally tend to cause people to gravitate to lower cal and more filling foods, IMO). Experimenting with what causes you to not be hungry, things like that, using common sense about meeting protein and other macros, getting in vegetables.
I have a friend who lost about 100 lbs some years ago, and when she started she was very clear that she had no intention of changing her diet (which was pretty bad, mostly fast food). It was something of a rebellious thing -- I don't want to cook, I want to eat this way. She did lose a bunch doing that, although making better choices at the fast food places, and then increasingly got interested in cooking and changed more. I think -- and I think she'd acknowledge -- that she had food issues and being nagged about how she didn't eat right made it harder for her. Deciding she could do it her way, and didn't have to conform to norms, made it easier, at did focusing on just one change rather than feeling like she had to give up all the foods she loved.
I didn't do it that way -- in my late 20s I realized I was getting fat because I'd stopped exercising, ate lots of high cal restaurant food we could get free at work, and then stuff that was free around the office. I decided I needed to find a way to cook my food and have a schedule, and did that, and started exercising again, and didn't count calories at all, and that worked for me then. But people have different things that work for them (and I managed to find a way in my late 30s to gain again while still eating a basically home-cooked, healthy diet).
No. I never said that people are blatantly encouraged to ignore nutrition, or that I think MFP in some way encourages people to ignore nutrition.
My point was that when "people" respond to basic weight loss questions with a simple, "eat less than you burn", that leaves a lot of context open to interpretation. And given how much knowledge, experiences, emotions, etc can vary person to person, I can understand how someone might interpret that as "MPF doesn't care about nutrition".
When people respond "eat less than you burn" it's because its simplifying in terms of "how to lose" because some complicate things, some feel - I can't eat after 7pm, I must eat breakfast, I can't eat xx foods etc. None of that is true in the simplistic terms of losing weight.
Up until 3 years ago I didn't now about CICO. I thought I had to restrict certian foods, fast, Atkins you name it I tried it. What a relief to find out all I had to do was find out how much I eat and how much I burn. As an adult I already had a basic sense of nutrition. I didn't need anyone to tell me what is nutritious or not.
If someone thinks MFP doesn't care about nutrition it's probably because they restrict in some way some foods that others are eating. I eat pizza once a week others will "never touch a pizza" again and think I'm not eating nutricious foods even though I eat a pretty nutricious diet overall.
Heres what I think...
1. people need to start losing weight however they eat poor diet and all if they do
2. we need to give people more credit, most adults have a basic understanding of nutritious foods
3. significant weight loss alone can be more important than a poor diet in most instances
4. people that continue on these forums learn that nutrition is important for overall health via context
5. people will eat what they want to eat no matter what we say9 -
bobsanders1 wrote: »
Already dropped 100 lbs hit my goal, all new clothes and am much Skinner than i was. Doesn't mean i forget where i came from. There was no plateau, no stalling or stubborn pounds period. A little common sense and hard work goes a long way.bobsanders1 wrote: »deannalfisher wrote: »bobsanders1 wrote: »UsE a fOoD ScALe
why do you disagree with this?
Because most people here believe its the be all end all of weight loss. Haven't weighted a single ounce of food in 6 months and doing just fine.
Maybe for skinny people trying to "lose weight" it may help but those of us with a ton to drop its unnecessary and a waste of time. As long as your mindful of portion sizes it does the same job.
You do realize eventually (if you are successful) you will someday be a 'skinny person trying to lose weight' for those last few stubborn pounds? Just because it doesn't apply to you specifically right now doesn't make it bad advice.
With respect, aren't you a man? (Guessing by your name.) That means you burn several hundred more calories a day than a woman with the same stats, and are likely to be taller in any case. It's petite women who have the greatest need for food scales, since a hundred calories can make or break a deficit for them.11 -
bobsanders1 wrote: »Looks like i offended the food scale police. Funny how the thread asks what you disagree with PERSONALLY. lol
You made your point. Are you now just stirring the pot?13 -
bobsanders1 wrote: »deannalfisher wrote: »bobsanders1 wrote: »UsE a fOoD ScALe
why do you disagree with this?
Because most people here believe its the be all end all of weight loss. Haven't weighted a single ounce of food in 6 months and doing just fine.
Maybe for skinny people trying to "lose weight" it may help but those of us with a ton to drop its unnecessary and a waste of time. As long as your mindful of portion sizes it does the same job.
I think you and I can agree that people are diffrent. Different people struggle with different types of food issues. So to put everyone in the same box isn't fair.
I too am not weighing everything, I do weigh somethings I just cant seem to eyeball like cashews I want a huge handful to be 160 calories when it's not.
Portions in the US have become huge so those growing up in the last couple of decades have no idea a portion is about the size of your palm for most things (except cashews:) and calorie dense foods). Heck even professionals are not good at estimating calories its been shown.
So while I agree with you that weighing food is not the be all end all of weight loss for some, I do believe that for others it sure is.3 -
bobsanders1 wrote: »deannalfisher wrote: »bobsanders1 wrote: »UsE a fOoD ScALe
why do you disagree with this?
Because most people here believe its the be all end all of weight loss. Haven't weighted a single ounce of food in 6 months and doing just fine.
Maybe for skinny people trying to "lose weight" it may help but those of us with a ton to drop its unnecessary and a waste of time. As long as your mindful of portion sizes it does the same job.
Nobody here that I've ever seen believes it is the "be all end all of weight loss." It's a tool to help people understand how many calories they are consuming. If you are someone who can accurately eyeball or use measuring cups, it's unnecessary. For the people who struggle with eyeballing (as studies show many of us do), it can be very helpful and that is why it is often recommended to people who aren't seeing the results they expect.6 -
cmriverside wrote: »bobsanders1 wrote: »Looks like i offended the food scale police. Funny how the thread asks what you disagree with PERSONALLY. lol
You made your point. Are you now just stirring the pot?
Sometimes unpopular opinions can be more accurately described as unpopular attitudes.17 -
I have a very hard time with the fact that MFP disregards nutrition other than general categories of carbs, protein and fat, when discussing weight loss. It's like this site views weight loss as if it were totally disconnected from essential human health.
It's true that all you need in order to lose weight is a calorie deficit. But that doesn't mean that you can afford to disregard actual nutrition. Sure, you could lose weight by eating nothing but candy bars, as long as you kept under your calorie goal. And you could probably hit all your MFP macros by adding a protein shake or two to that candy bar diet. But your body as a whole organism would not thrive.
"About 85% of Americans do not consume the US Food and Drug Administration’s recommended daily intakes of the most important vitamins and minerals necessary for proper physical and mental development."
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/10/nutrition-hunger-food-children-vitamins-us
"Malnutrition is thought of as a distant issue, but this condition often goes hand-in-hand with eight chronic diseases, and it costs the U.S. $15.5 billion annually in direct costs."
http://www.nutritionnews.abbott/nutrition-as-medicine/malnutrition-in-america.html
Anytime anyone mentions comparative nutritional value on here, they are "woo"ed to death. Even something as mild as stating that whole grain breads and brown rice are healthier than white bread and white rice provokes a chorus of disagreement. As if the key nutrients in complex carbohydrates and the outer germ and bran of grains (fiber, B vitamins, iron, folate, selenium, potassium and magnesium) are somehow meaningless. As if this advice from Mayo Clinic, based on accepted science, doesn't count:
"Whole grains are also linked to a lower risk of heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers and other health problems."
And MFP is one of the only sites I know of (outside of the Coca Cola website, maybe) where the SCIENTIFICALLY AGREED-UPON FACT that sugar is actually bad for you is treated as some sort of radical opinion. Science is real, people. No matter how many "woos" you give it.
It is not only people who have diabetes who have to think about sugar. To quote just one of the uniform knowledgeable sources:
“Regardless of their Healthy Eating Index scores, people who ate more sugar still had higher cardiovascular mortality,” says Dr. Teresa Fung, adjunct professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eating-too-much-added-sugar-increases-the-risk-of-dying-with-heart-disease-201402067021
It's like most people on MFP are so fixated on losing weight that they want to join together in an aggressive, in-your-face denial of nutritional facts. "There are no bad foods," is like biblical scripture here.
If you fill up your calorie allotment with added sugars and low-nutrient, highly processed junk food and fast food, you are not going to be healthy -- even if you are losing weight. There is a reason to eat a wide variety of nutrient dense foods and minimize added sugars. Human beings need the wide range of micronutrients and trace elements that occur in fresh produce, good quality proteins, legumes, etc.
Science is real.
I am reading this "There are no bad foods" stuff a lot lately from lots of sources. While I know there is some truth to that, I am struggling with eating right to help my blood lipids panel, and for me there are some definite bad and good foods.1 -
I have a very hard time with the fact that MFP disregards nutrition other than general categories of carbs, protein and fat, when discussing weight loss. It's like this site views weight loss as if it were totally disconnected from essential human health.
It's true that all you need in order to lose weight is a calorie deficit. But that doesn't mean that you can afford to disregard actual nutrition. Sure, you could lose weight by eating nothing but candy bars, as long as you kept under your calorie goal. And you could probably hit all your MFP macros by adding a protein shake or two to that candy bar diet. But your body as a whole organism would not thrive.
"About 85% of Americans do not consume the US Food and Drug Administration’s recommended daily intakes of the most important vitamins and minerals necessary for proper physical and mental development."
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/10/nutrition-hunger-food-children-vitamins-us
"Malnutrition is thought of as a distant issue, but this condition often goes hand-in-hand with eight chronic diseases, and it costs the U.S. $15.5 billion annually in direct costs."
http://www.nutritionnews.abbott/nutrition-as-medicine/malnutrition-in-america.html
Anytime anyone mentions comparative nutritional value on here, they are "woo"ed to death. Even something as mild as stating that whole grain breads and brown rice are healthier than white bread and white rice provokes a chorus of disagreement. As if the key nutrients in complex carbohydrates and the outer germ and bran of grains (fiber, B vitamins, iron, folate, selenium, potassium and magnesium) are somehow meaningless. As if this advice from Mayo Clinic, based on accepted science, doesn't count:
"Whole grains are also linked to a lower risk of heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers and other health problems."
And MFP is one of the only sites I know of (outside of the Coca Cola website, maybe) where the SCIENTIFICALLY AGREED-UPON FACT that sugar is actually bad for you is treated as some sort of radical opinion. Science is real, people. No matter how many "woos" you give it.
It is not only people who have diabetes who have to think about sugar. To quote just one of the uniform knowledgeable sources:
“Regardless of their Healthy Eating Index scores, people who ate more sugar still had higher cardiovascular mortality,” says Dr. Teresa Fung, adjunct professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eating-too-much-added-sugar-increases-the-risk-of-dying-with-heart-disease-201402067021
It's like most people on MFP are so fixated on losing weight that they want to join together in an aggressive, in-your-face denial of nutritional facts. "There are no bad foods," is like biblical scripture here.
If you fill up your calorie allotment with added sugars and low-nutrient, highly processed junk food and fast food, you are not going to be healthy -- even if you are losing weight. There is a reason to eat a wide variety of nutrient dense foods and minimize added sugars. Human beings need the wide range of micronutrients and trace elements that occur in fresh produce, good quality proteins, legumes, etc.
Science is real.
I am reading this "There are no bad foods" stuff a lot lately from lots of sources. While I know there is some truth to that, I am struggling with eating right to help my blood lipids panel, and for me there are some definite bad and good foods.
People with specific health issues or allergies/intolerance problems may have foods that are bad for them or contraindicated by their conditions.
It's when those restrictions are expanded out to include everyone, regardless of medical situation, that they become a problem.
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I have a very hard time with the fact that MFP disregards nutrition other than general categories of carbs, protein and fat, when discussing weight loss. It's like this site views weight loss as if it were totally disconnected from essential human health.
It's true that all you need in order to lose weight is a calorie deficit. But that doesn't mean that you can afford to disregard actual nutrition. Sure, you could lose weight by eating nothing but candy bars, as long as you kept under your calorie goal. And you could probably hit all your MFP macros by adding a protein shake or two to that candy bar diet. But your body as a whole organism would not thrive.
"About 85% of Americans do not consume the US Food and Drug Administration’s recommended daily intakes of the most important vitamins and minerals necessary for proper physical and mental development."
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/10/nutrition-hunger-food-children-vitamins-us
"Malnutrition is thought of as a distant issue, but this condition often goes hand-in-hand with eight chronic diseases, and it costs the U.S. $15.5 billion annually in direct costs."
http://www.nutritionnews.abbott/nutrition-as-medicine/malnutrition-in-america.html
Anytime anyone mentions comparative nutritional value on here, they are "woo"ed to death. Even something as mild as stating that whole grain breads and brown rice are healthier than white bread and white rice provokes a chorus of disagreement. As if the key nutrients in complex carbohydrates and the outer germ and bran of grains (fiber, B vitamins, iron, folate, selenium, potassium and magnesium) are somehow meaningless. As if this advice from Mayo Clinic, based on accepted science, doesn't count:
"Whole grains are also linked to a lower risk of heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers and other health problems."
And MFP is one of the only sites I know of (outside of the Coca Cola website, maybe) where the SCIENTIFICALLY AGREED-UPON FACT that sugar is actually bad for you is treated as some sort of radical opinion. Science is real, people. No matter how many "woos" you give it.
It is not only people who have diabetes who have to think about sugar. To quote just one of the uniform knowledgeable sources:
“Regardless of their Healthy Eating Index scores, people who ate more sugar still had higher cardiovascular mortality,” says Dr. Teresa Fung, adjunct professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eating-too-much-added-sugar-increases-the-risk-of-dying-with-heart-disease-201402067021
It's like most people on MFP are so fixated on losing weight that they want to join together in an aggressive, in-your-face denial of nutritional facts. "There are no bad foods," is like biblical scripture here.
If you fill up your calorie allotment with added sugars and low-nutrient, highly processed junk food and fast food, you are not going to be healthy -- even if you are losing weight. There is a reason to eat a wide variety of nutrient dense foods and minimize added sugars. Human beings need the wide range of micronutrients and trace elements that occur in fresh produce, good quality proteins, legumes, etc.
Science is real.
I am reading this "There are no bad foods" stuff a lot lately from lots of sources. While I know there is some truth to that, I am struggling with eating right to help my blood lipids panel, and for me there are some definite bad and good foods.
Did you miss the point that it is often more helpful to think in terms of overall diet or day?
Most medical diets actually do that too -- they will say to limit certain foods, but usually in the context of also increasing or including other options.
My frustration is "cut out this list of food" as the sum total of one's approach to nutrition is not actually an educated approach to nutrition. Nutrition is about what you eat. Some people, yes, should probably avoid specific foods (allergic people or people with celiac or the lactose intolerant). My dad decided to try a dietary approach to cholesterol and cut way down on sat fat, but that doesn't make steak or whole milk a "bad food," it means he limits his consumption of them and tends to save it for special occasions. (My dad was not overweight and exercised quite a lot already, but given the connection between being overweight and cholesterol issues, if he had focused only on food choice and not amount, that also would not have been ideal.)
I would agree that for some calling certain foods "bad" doesn't have a negative effect (although I still don't think it's very informative or helpful). But for others it tends to overwhelm a sensible, non emotional approach to nutrition with "I ate this bad food, I'm bad" or "I ate this bad food, now everything is ruined, I might as well blow off the day or week or month" or "I am more virtuous than people who eat bad foods."8 -
bobsanders1 wrote: »Looks like i offended the food scale police. Funny how the thread asks what you disagree with PERSONALLY. lol
I doubt anyone was actually offended.....in the debate sub-forum I usually expect someone to have an opinion on something I type.14 -
a calorie is a calorie is a calorie - and they all have the same value.21
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bobsanders1 wrote: »Looks like i offended the food scale police. Funny how the thread asks what you disagree with PERSONALLY. lol
So because most people personally disagree with you, you feel the need to insult them? No, not everybody needs a food scale, but as others have pointed out, it can be a valuable tool, and you completely ignore the context of which the advice is given. If everyone was starting from the same point, had the same stats, and had the same goals, then making generalizations might be ok, but seeing that that isn't the case, I do believe that advising people who are having trouble losing to invest in a food scale is good advice. Because you personally haven't experienced any issues with weight loss up to this point doesn't mean you never will. I didn't experience issues losing weight, but once I got to goal and decided to bulk, and then recomp, a food scale became a necessity because I needed to be as close to exact as possible. Your refusal to acknowledge the points made by others makes you appear to believe that the way you do things should work for everyone which is clearly false. People that post on here with a superiority complex like that are what I find irritating because it can easily be discouraging to those who do struggle.15 -
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Advice I get frustrated with, although I don't think it's the majority of MFP speaking, is that which confuses "a calorie" -- which is a unit of measurement and doesn't have other properties like nutritional content -- and "a food" which of course does.
A calorie=a calorie just like an acre=an acre.
But rather obviously -- and I am continually mystified when people cannot grasp this or insist upon misrepresenting what is being said -- foods are not all identical, and have many different properties. Just as an acre in one location can be very different in all properties BUT SIZE than other acres.
I'd be open to engaging in a friendly discussion of this with anyone who is genuinely confused as to the distinction I am making, but from past experience people who confuse the two are never actually interested in discussing it or understanding, but prefer to assert, incorrectly, that others are saying foods are all identical in all respects.
Am I being too pessimistic?23 -
janejellyroll wrote: »
I don't think I need to answer to you ABOUT WHAT ADVICE I PERSONALLY DONT AGREE WITH - GO EAT A BOWL OF CARROTS OR A BOWL OF ICE CREAM - YOUR CHOICE.
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I'll take ice cream.
Js7 -
But that's so silly.
Bowl of carrots 100g = 40 calories
Same 100g of ice cream = 245 calories
*edited for actual 100g comp12 -
janejellyroll wrote: »
I don't think I need to answer to you ABOUT WHAT ADVICE I PERSONALLY DONT AGREE WITH - GO EAT A BOWL OF CARROTS OR A BOWL OF ICE CREAM - YOUR CHOICE.
It's the Debate forum. We're debating.
As for carrots or ice cream...
23
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