Eating habits

[Leahbushen1]

Iv been counting calories and trying to be healthy but I'm going down an old route which is not wanting anything inside of me and bringing my food up, I want to find a way of loosing weight but the right way without getting ill any ideas??

[minclecton]

Eat healthy: eat 3 whole meals a day. For your meals, you want something healthy and that fills you up so that you don't get hungry again for a long time. You need to also make healthy choices like eating whole wheat bread or whole grain bread instead of white bread and brown rice instead of white rice. Cut all junk food. They are bad for you and cause weight gain fast. Cut fast food as well! If you get hungry in between your 3 meals, eat a piece of fruit/vegetable, low-fat yogurt, skim milk, or fruit juice. They are all good and healthy and will burn fat. As well as eating healthy, combine with exercise and you will lose the weight healthfully and easily. Diets don't work in the long run. When you consume too little, or deprive yourself of certain foods, you are also not getting the essential nutrients. That's why everyone gain the weight back and more in diets. Diet's are a plan for fail. Instead, just focus on eating healthy. You will feel better, look better, and perform better. Opt for a healthy lifestyle, not a fad diet. that's how you lose weight and keep it off for good.

For the exercise, don't overdo yourself. Just walking, jogging for 1 hour each day will be more than enough. Remember to rest for 1 day of the week. Also, if 1 hour is too long for you, you can BREAK IT DOWN throughout the day. Nobody said you have to get it all done in one shot, just do some after you wake up, some in the afternoon maybe, and sometime before or after dinner. It's more manageable that way. Walking, jogging, running or swimming are aerobic/cardio exercises and they burn the most calories and fat. They will make you strengthen or build your muscle and keep you burning more calories and fat.

eat healthy and exercise is the golden rule of losing weight. Good luck

[Leahbushen1 in reply to minclecton]

Okay I'll give that a go thank you

[Leahbushen1]

I'll give that a try thank you

[linlow]

Leahbushen1 , being one of those people who only has to look at food to put weight on, I so know what you are talking about. Thanks to a slow metabolism and mother's generous portion control I just about started life out as overweight. For some unknown reason during the short period between my late teens and early twenties I suddenly became very sveldt. Everyone said I had just 'lost all the puppy fat' but I didn't question it too much. I just enjoyed all the wolf whistles and extra popularity - until my GP put me on hormones. I went from fashion model figured to obese almost overnight!! Try as I might, with every diet going, supervised or otherwise, or daily exercise regimen out there, I was unable to get below seriously overweight whilst I was taking them. I was very fit but also very fat. And, yes, there were times I got so despondent I would purge Even years later, and carefully following dietary guidelines, I was still overweight.

Recently my endocrinologist put me back on some meds that I knew from previous experience would increase my weight so I got on the internet and spent hours trawling research. What I found out answered the question of why I had shed that 'puppy fat'. As a sixth former I no longer had to eat school meals or take in mother's packed lunches but could leave school at lunchtime to dine on whatever took my fancy. And what took my fancy, aside from lots of apples and pears, was 'unhealthy' fats.

To cut a long story short (I did a LOT of reading and watching of videos), what my research uncovered was that, aside from the garbage that the food industry is shovelling down my throat, the dietary advice that has been 'current' for the last fifty years is what was keeping me fat and the way to get thin was to ignore it and go back to the advice it superseded. The advice that said fat is good, carbs are bad. They say that it takes 50 years to learn from our mistakes and, though there have been a few isolated circles holding on to the old beliefs ( ketoisland.com/news/eat-fat... ) and much research to the contrary, it is only now that those dissenting voices are being heard. Probably, as much as anything else, thanks to the power of the internet to disseminate information (though you do have to be careful of the cranks and those with hidden agendas).

Anyway I was cutting this short What I ended up doing was putting myself on a low carb high fat diet, about 60-70% fat, 20%ish protein, 10%ish carbs (check out sites like dietdoctor.com for the science behind it). There was so much food and the fats filled me up so much that I couldn't eat all my daily rations but the weight just melted off. Without counting a single calorie at all, in less than a month I lost 10% of my body weight!! Now I am back down to that teenage weight, though perhaps not quite as enticing , I have shifted on to something more akin to the Harvard Pyramid hsph.harvard.edu/nutritions... but with carbs and dairy swapped around (it is a bit difficult to say for certain as I am allergic to animal flesh so vegetarian) and this is maintaining my weight loss rather successfully.

Of course you do still need to exercise but you are exercising to tone muscle and tighten skin rather than to burn calories. Research shows that the best form of exercise you can do is rebounding - NASA even uses it as part of the astronaut training program rebound-aerobics.com/NASA_r... Rebounding also affects the lymphatic system and aids the removal of toxins from the body. Be aware as you combine the two, diet and exercise, that muscle weighs more than fat so there will come a time when you have to rely upon the tape measure rather than scales to show how well you are doing.

[linlow]

And there's more

I thought my other post was getting a bit long so split it for easier reading......

The principles of how LCHF works are basically: Fat provides 9 calories per gram, protein and carbohydrates both provide 4 but the way that the body responds to each of these macronutrients is totally different.

Carbs (particularly processed ones) are very quickly turned into sugars that are transported around the body for a quick energy fix. Whatever is not required immediately is then converted into fat by insulin and stored 'for a rainy day'. This is called 'the famine response'. Of course, because we eat regularly that 'rainy day' hardly ever comes so each meal adds a little more stored fat to our girth - unless we eat less and less each day.

Proteins are digested much more slowly, helping you to stay fuller for longer, so make a great way to start the day. They are first converted into amino acids, the raw materials for making hormones, muscle, and other essential biological equipment. Any excess is then converted to glucose for energy and handled much in the same way as carbohydrates. Because of the length of time they spend in the gut, proteins can cause constipation if they make up too high a proportion of the diet.

Fats, avoiding trans-fats of course, also take a long time to be absorbed, again helping you to stay fuller for longer. Whilst carbohydrate digestion begins in the mouth when you take that first bite, fat digestion doesn't begin until it reaches the small intestine. Also, compared to protein and carbs, fat molecules are more complex, which means they're harder for your body to break apart, which adds to the digestion time and uses more energy in the process (hence the start of the 'eat fat to burn fat' principle). As well as being a slow release source of energy, they provide the essential fatty acids, linoleic and linolenic acid, so necessary for life. They help to keep your skin and hair healthy and provide a vehicle for the absorption of vitamins A, D, E, and K, the so-called fat-soluble vitamins. The majority of your fats should be from unsaturated sources such as fatty fish, nuts and seeds and healthy vegetable oils (including some coconut oil, it being rich in medium chain saturated fats that can feed the brain, but more particularly those high in omega 3s such as grass fed ghee authoritynutrition.com/opti... ).

Eating smaller meals with the correct balance of these macronutrients will avoid overloading your digestive system and provide for a long, even energy release.

Processed sugars contain high levels of fructose (eg Sugar 50%, HFCS 55%, Honey 45%, Agave syrup 95%). Fructose cannot be used by the body so the liver converts it to fat and stores it (causing NAFLD). At the same time the 'sweetness factor' stimulates the release of insulin that then has no job to do so leads to insulin related disorders. Some fruits are high in fructose but their effect on blood sugars is somewhat ameliorated by their fibre content so are not as detrimental in their effect unless or until processed into juices or smoothies.

Artificial sweeteners have the same effect on insulin production as fructose. Whilst they do not contribute to liver disease (as far as I know) they do incite insulin resistance and aggravate diabetic conditions.

[K1k1_belle in reply to linlow]

Amen to that 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻😉😉😉 Don't eat anything that has an advert 😉

[Roberta43]

Thanks Linlow, this is fascinating. I have read up on the topic too, and like you I have found lots of information suggesting we should be eating more healthy fats. Apart from weight loss, a diet rich in these kinds of fats is supposed to be good for perimenopause which is something I am struggling with right now. My dilemma however is that fats are far more calorific than carbs and proteins, and I personally found I was putting on weight when I ate lots of olive oil, nuts, avocados and seeds. What I am trying to do now is to keep my calorie intake under 1,300 cals per day ... This means I have to be very, very careful what I eat as the calories add up really quickly when you include things like nuts in your diet. The problem is, I am often hungry ... I find that I don't actually get full and stay full on such little food. I have started alternating the nuts, avocados etc ... This was suggested by someone on this forum and it is working well. I am also extra careful with what I eat, I am including lots of veggies as they have so few calories. Two problems with this ... Fresh vegetables are expensive, and I am spending lots of time cooking and chopping them up ... Plus my husband and kids want their normal food so I end up cooking two different types of food, which means double the washing up. Sigh. I truly feel I have no choice, however, as I want to do what I can to make menopause easier for me. I do lots of exercise ...running, cycling and now swimming too ... It has made me fit but I have not lost ANY weight at all from just exercising. The only thing that works for me is exercising PLUS eating 1,300 calories a day and I have to be religious about this regime for it to work. I went on holiday over Easter for just ten days and did not exercise or calories count, and when I got back I found I had put ALL the weight I lost so far back on. So, no slip ups! This makes me despondent sometimes, but I am beginning to accept it is just the way things are. Any way, good luck and thanks for your post.

[K1k1_belle in reply to Roberta43]

Your body is probably storing fat cause you're eating too little calories, it thinks it's in a famine - it's a survival mechanism.

[linlow in reply to Roberta43]

Hi Roberta43 sorry, as you replied to the OP, I didn't realise you had responded to me. I don't know if you are a stay-at-home or working mum but you have my sympathies if you get no support for your efforts from your family. A mother's work is never done but the trials and tribulations of menopause onset are enough to wear anyone ragged without any extra load. Is the family menu so different to yours that you cannot find at least some common ground? Lchf can really be quite 'normal' once you get the hang of it (whatever normal is). So the kids have bacon butties whilst you have bacon in a low carb wrap the-lowcarb-diet.com/low-ca... Or they have egg and chips whilst you have cheese omelette and tomatoes. Turning a meal, such as chicken and veg, into soup will also keep you feeling fuller for longer than the same meal on a plate and is something the whole family can share. Is it possible to cook in batches and freeze some so that you only have to cook one meal and reheat the other? Then again I am sure, since you have done your research, that you are aware that processed foods, particularly carbs, are damaging health the world over. Perhaps it is time to tell them that you aren't prepared to damage their futures - at least one day a week (working up to 7) - or if they want different they can do the dishes. dietdoctor.com might help with recipe ideas or lowcarbhighfatrecipes.com/l... or ditchthecarbs.com/recipes/

I can't really give you any certain advice without more information but here are a few ideas that might help. When lchf was failing and leaving you hungry, were you getting enough protein? You are right that calories count but sufficient protein should keep you satiated so you don't over consume - as I said, I couldn't eat it all. Are you getting too much exercise? Too much is as bad for you as too little - especially as it drives an increase in appetite chriskresser.com/why-you-ma... What vegetables are you buying that makes them so expensive? Yes avocado might be but brocolli shouldn't be. It, like celery and grapefruit, is calorie negative so snacking on that might help keep you feeling fuller between meals (especially if you are tempted to snack in the evening). You could also use at least some frozen vegetables, particularly if you intend to cook them. They are considered more nutritious than raw veg, that have spent days deteriorating on a shelf, as they are frozen almost as soon as they are picked. They also tend to be cheaper to buy, make less waste and come ready chopped. Are you on any medications that might increase body weight? That was what started my foray into eating fat to get thin and it certainly made a huge difference in the amount I was able to lose once the meds kicked in. ketodietapp.com/Blog/post/2... Is it possible that you have a sensitivity to any particular food or food group? That might cause issues precisionnutrition.com/elim... Have you thought to try going ketogenic and see if it can kick-start weight loss for you?

If I think of anything else I will pop back.

[Andrewgrants]

don't forget to exercise daily... make it a routine my friend.

[K1k1_belle]

Agreed!! I'm finally loosing my spare tyre on my stomach from eating good fats- they've balanced out my blood sugars so I don't get migraines, shakes and cravings any more - and I sleep through the night every night now. Avocados are the best, nuts, ghee, butter, peanut butter and coconut oil/butter. I promise you once you start eating healthy (nothing that comes in a packet with a list of ingredients) you'll start shifting to mind to health and weight will stop being the focus - I never lost weight when I wanted to be skinny, only when I decided to get healthy.💟💟💟

[PhilFreeToAsk]

Just an observation. When you mention "bringing" food up then it sounds as if you have strong emotions involved. Mind and body are so connected and just thinking physical without addressing the emotions may not be enough. As an adjunct to any therapy and diet have you thought about seeing a good acupuncturist to help reduce the effects of these emotions?