The "Dieting" dilema; bad food, worse ideas.

Can I bump with a thought/observation that ocurred to me last evening that is in a similar vein?

I have seen arguments to Boss Banks' (and others) posts about needing to eat ENOUGH calories to lose, stating time and time again "But I am losing eating 1,000/1,100/1,200 calories, does this really apply to me??" and my mouth just hangs open, because these people seem to WANT to eat less than is healthy, when they are being SHOWN that eating MORE (healthy food) can not only lead to success, but even GREATER success. I just don't understand! Is it an illness that leads to this thought process, a need to punish oneself in order to meet with success?

I dunno, I'm just grateful for all that I have learned while on MFP thanks to those who repeatedly hit their head against the wall of humanity in an effort "to show us the way". :laugh: And I'm grateful that I can EAT!!!!!!

Thanks Boss! And I agree, Jeannie is the (wo)MAN, she is my current role model (hope you don't mind having a bit of a cyber stalker Jeannie!). :blushing: We can all benefit from a healthy dose of positive thinking and realistic approaches!

This will be...ahh... a tad long, so, sorry for that at the outset.

I've been an MFP member for coming up on 2 years now (on September 10th), and in that time I've become privy to some interesting and sometimes disturbing facts about the normal, average, person who is looking to lose weight. I'd like to share my thoughts on some of this and maybe wake some people up to the realities of the human body, diet, and exercise. Feel free to comment and even criticize this if you feel you need to, I'm a big boy, I can take it, but beware, if I think you're wrong, I'll say it, never in a mean fashion, but non-the-less, I will retort on things I disagree with.

I'll start by saying this:
People eat TERRIBLY! Even the majority of the people on this site don't eat all that healthy most of the time. When people think of "bad" food, they think, fried chicken, french fries, and twinkies (or some such foods). Well, I'm hear to tell you that the obvious choices aren't the ONLY bad foods out there. I'm not going to list off all the bad and good foods out there, IT'S YOUR JOB TO FIND THE FOOD THAT WORKS FOR YOUR BODY! You may not know you're eating badly, you may even think you're eating right, well maybe you are, and maybe you aren't, I submit that if you haven't looked into what you are eating with a fined tooth comb, then you may be surprised. Foods like Healthy Choice and Weight Watchers meals aren't all that healthy believe it or not, many up the chemicals to reduce the calories, most put some kind of processed starch or white flour product in it to up the glycemic index and make you feel full longer, this does not help your metabolism. Be wary of "diet" meals, they're usually ok in a pinch as a replacement, but shouldn't be your staple meal.

The next thing I'd like to mention is the actual needs of your body, and what foods do what for them. People tend to forget that a variety of vegetables, fruits, legumes, and grains offer up much more than the big 3 as far as nutrients (Fat, Carbohydrates, Protein). Many put micro nutrients in your body that are needed for proper bone, organ, muscle, and nervous system development. Things such as Beta-carotene, Calcium, Potassium, Folic Acid, antioxidants, Iron, magnesium, and sodium along with a host of other nutrients are needed, these are all things that are generally stripped out of food when it is processed, and then put back in after the fact in the "enriching" process. This is no good, artificially implanted nutrients generally have a far lower absorption rate than when they are naturally used. And, no, vitamin supplements don't cut it (for a variety of reasons).

Another topic I'd like to talk about is the "low calorie" idea. Look, we don't need reduced calorie this, and fat free that, we need to understand what a serving is, and stick to it! WE EAT TOO MUCH! You do it, I did it, the restaurant industry promotes it, even pre-packaged foods promote it. Why? Many reasons, restaurants recognize that satiation (the full feeling) usually sparks that feeling of "home" and safety, and security, which translates into positive mental outlook on the establishment, it's a nice sentiment, but it's a trick, serving you extra doesn't do you any favors, our brains are wired on the pre-historic, instinctual level to eat all we possibly can, because in those days we didn't know when our next meal will come! Fine and dandy if you live in the great rift valley in Africa at about 100,000 BC, but for the here and now, we don't need all that extra, and it's being stored as body fat.
That all said, reduced calorie meals are not what our body is looking for, do some research, it doesn't take much, and find out what a serving is of a particular food, when in doubt, use your fist, if a carbohydrate portion is more than your fist, it's probably more than a serving for you! Eating those low calorie foods, or low fat foods, or diet meals does nothing good for you, cook something, throw a bunch of veggies, some chicken and a cut up sweet potato in a stir fry pan with some extra virgin olive oil, some spices, a nice helping of garlic, and a 1/2 cup of water and cook it! It's really not that hard, and it gives you just about everything you need for ALL your nutrients!

Lastly I'd like to talk about the idea of exercise and what roll it plays with losing weight. Lets stop for a second and ask ourselves a question: Do I want to lose weight, or do I want to lose excess fat? It sounds elementary, but it's an important question to ask! And it's central to why we are here. You can lose all the weight you want, but if you do it by gimmicks, pills, and/or starving yourself, you're not losing fat (or not nearly as much as you think). Exercise goes right along with this, see, the body considers exercise stress, it considers it a BAD thing.
You may ask "WHAT???!!! WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, MY BODY LOVES EXERCISE!" No, it doesn't, your body likes the status quo, exercise forces your body to build muscle, which it doesn't like to normally do, your body builds the ABSOLUTE minimum amount of muscle it needs to perform a task. Which is why if you exercise a certain way for a while, then up your exercise in either time or exertion level you become tired faster. Exercise cause stress, the same stress that worrying about your bills does, this releases hormones, because the body can't differentiate between stress types, and it thinks you are running from a big scary carnivore, so it releases these hormones that trigger energy release, which when you are exercising is fine, but when you aren't that energy has to go somewhere, so it is turned to fat. Sorry, but it's true. Light exercise doesn't help much either (be wary, light exercise is subjective, light for you may be high intensity for someone else).
So all that said, exercise is a good way to increase muscle mass, oxygen intake and efficiency, and endurance levels, but it won't negate bad eating habits.

Finally to all you people starving yourself. I'll be blunt: IT DOESN'T WORK! Will you lose weight? Probably, almost definitely, but you're harming your organs, your reducing your bone mass (helllloooo osteoporosis later in life), and you're reducing muscle mass. For all the reasons above, the body will recognize starvation as a trigger to reduce it's working mass (that means muscle, bone, and organs) and increase fat mass. How do you lose weight and learn to eat healthy? Not by starving, you do it by eating a moderate deficit of healthy food, and a good, solid workout schedule. AND YOU KEEP DOING THIS FOR MONTHS OR YEARS, will people PLEASE stop talking about "I only lost 2 lbs this week!" listen, it doesn't matter, what matters is your body fat, and the only way to reduce body fat is a healthy diet that tells your body, "hey, there's no need to store extra fat." and an exercise program that promotes muscle stimulation and growth, and CONTINUING on this track, short term diets do nothing besides throw your body out of whack and sometimes reduce your fat free mass making you lose weight (the wrong kind of weight in many cases).

To summarize, first you have to learn how to eat correctly for YOU. Kick the carbohydrate habit (that doesn't mean eliminate carbs, it means making GOOD carb choices). AND FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, do your homework! You wouldn't walk into a used car lot and buy the first one you see that you like, the same goes for your body, do your research, find out what's right for you, and damn it, work HARD! Only you know what hard work is, forget the starvation and expecting 3 lbs per week weight loss! Don't be foolish, take a long, hard look at your eating habits, and use your head, think about it. Start simple people, learn about serving sizes, healthy grains, macronutrients, and micronutrients, then go from there.

that's all I have to say.

regards folks.

-Banks

I don't quite understand this part. Exercise causes you to store fat? The stress from exercise is equal to the stress of worrying about bills? Not to question your facts, but I've never heard anything like that before. If that's true, it seems like exercise is bad for your health, because all I ever hear is that chronic stress is terrible for your health, and actually reduces your lifespan.

I usually feel good when I exercise, however when I'm stressing over money issues I feel about as bad as I could possibly feel.

At the end of that paragraph you state that exercise is good for this and that, but overall, if it puts the body in a state equivalent to high stress situations which are bad for you and increases body fat, how could it be a good thing?

Forgive me for asking, but this is new information for me, so I need clarification.

I'll explain a little more.

during stressful times our body releases hormones, lots of hormones, most don't really affect our metabolism but a couple do in very very specific ways. Cortisol is released to block insulin from pulling energy from the blood sugar (insulin and cortisol have a FAR more complicated relationship then this, but for our purposes saying it "blocks" it is good enough), and insulin is what keeps our bloodsugar in check by helping glucose get to our cells.
Now, when the stress is brought on by exercise, other hormones are released as well, the higher the intensity of activity, the more of these other hormones are produced (specifically Human Growth Hormone and Testosterone). Now, HGH and Testosterone somewhat counteract the effects of cortisol because they trigger muscle growth and muscle stimulation, which requires more blood glucose (sugar) and thus the excess blood sugar that cortisol promotes is used up, but when we stress over things and aren't exercising, there's no counter to the cortisol, thus the extra glucose in our blood is eventually taken and converted to fat for storage by the body. This is a very simplistic description of stress and hormonal effects, but it's good enough for our topic.

As to how we feel when we work out, yeah, we generally feel good after we work out, but not because our body is happy, it's because our body release other hormones to make us feel good, to counteract all those aches and pains, and fatigue. Why? Because way back when, you didn't want to be running from a Cave bear and suddenly feel fatigued and tired, you wanted a feeling of euphoria for 2 reasons, 1) to be able to run through the pain of any injuries you might have acquired while being chased, and 2) to eliminate the fear response in animals which is to freeze and become indecisive. The main chemicals for this are adrenaline and dopamine. And THAT'S why you feel good after you work out, not because your muscles are pleased with you.

Exercise doesn't cause you to store fat, rather exercise is more of a contributor to fat burning, my main point of this section was that while exercise is a good booster for the fat metabolism, it's healthy eating that will be the driving force for reducing body fat, not exercise (unless you have the time and energy to work out 3 to 4 hours a day at a high level of effort, and even then, it WILL eventually catch up with you as you age).

Hope this helps.

Thank you, that was very helpful.