It is not what you eat is it what you keep so why torture yourself dieting?

If you are eating 10,000 calories a day there is no way you can exercise enough to keep the balance. Also if you are eating nothing but junk food you aren’t going to be healthy no matter how nuch exercise you do.

Generally because, as I’m sure you understand, its not about dieting its about lifestyle change. A lot of people are ill informed and believe, if they diet this will give them the figure they want. This is sort of true but only in the short term, when people stop the diet they start piling the pounds back on.

The other problem is that things like pizza, burgers and chips contain a disproportionate amount of calories (cash) which people dont think about and believe that if they excercise once a week they can eat pizza three times a week…. **WRONG**.

I often get confused as to why people find dieting so hard and go on diets. Basic nutrition that your body is designed to be eating anyway, like lots of fruit and vegetables and lean meats makes you lose weight naturally in a balanced (biologically normal) diet with the excercise, until your body finds its natural equilibrium.

In short people need to make a move away from the high carbohydrate, high fat, highly addictive junk foods and start treating their body like they would a very expensive, finely tuned vehicle and then they might be surprised by what their bodies can do.

This wrong on so many points. To start off with, without getting the proper balance of vitamins, minerals and proteins, you will not thrive. Your body needs the correct input. And next, your diet is whatever you eat. The restrictive diets of the past are most discredited. You do not have to give up anything. What you do have to do is choose more fruits and vegetables, less meats and snacks, and smaller portions. It is unrealistic to believe that you can simply exercise away any amount of junk you put into your body.

Healthy eating and exercise is the only way forward if you want to lose weight.
But why can’t people be happy with the skin they are in?
It’s not what’s on the outside, it’s what is on the inside that counts. A good kind heart, a caring and giving personality is what is more important. Love what you have, and most importantly love yourself.

@Lightlyseared The ultra-marathon runners – 100 miles or more eat 14,000 calories per day while running. In the book Ultra marathon man by Dean Karnazes he said he would eat 28000 calories over the course of a weekend. He describes the diet, how he ate while running and how he managed to run over night! He did not gain weight.
The biggest effect is “Calories in minus calories burned”. The rest is fine tuning.

Too many people worry about the caloric guidelines published by all the people advocating all kinds of diets. I’ve come to believe that this information was written for people who are almost completely sedentary in their lifestyle. I’ve been active at work and play since I was a kid and never struggled with weight. About 10 years ago I got a desk job and gained 40 lbs. in 2 years.I quit that job, started playing tennis a few times a week, hiking once or twice a week and got a job working in a warehouse and lost 30lbs in a year. I’m 50 now and have much less appetite than when I was younger. I work in a 38 degree Fahrenheit meat locker 8 hours a day now lugging boxes and carcasses. Exercise isn’t something I do once or twice or even three times a week, it’s something I do every day, all day. If you’re unfortunate enough to work behind a desk in a tiny little cubicle then you better start walking to work every day and develop an intensive exercise program to make up for the 8 hours of doing nothing every day.

You have made a lot of simplistic assumptions. The first being that people can simply start “eating less” and “exercising more”.

Healthy eating and moderation is what keeps your diet balanced. It may take some cutting back, but if you keep it up your body will get used to it.

@worriedguy Yes and southpole solo walkers eat 30,000 calories a day and manage to lose 60kg of fat on a 13 day walk. But those are extreme examples and don’t excuse your average joe fat arsed slob to sit around all day shovelling crap into their mouths and think that 10 minutes on the rowing machine will sort it out.

@dynamic3 ” I often get confused as to why people find dieting so hard and go on diets.” I did not know dieting from shinola but what I did know about them I would have been a failure at it, there was no way I was going to be on one of them juice only diets or diets where you eat all organic vegetable etc and not been ready to decapitate anyone that spoke to me. And telling me I can’t have a chocolate milkshake or my Chewy Chips Ahoy? Oh hell no, I ain’t going for it.

Strange thing you mentioned a vehicle what I did know was when I had my 70s era muscle car with the big engine, Holly 4 banger carb, the over bored pistons and the racing cam that sucker sucked gas, it had lots of power but it took a lot of fuel. Using that as a template I figured the more power that was needed the more fuel (calories) would be burned. But unlike a car my tank would not go dry because I had an auxiliary tank . When my body burned up all that I ate the auxiliary would kick in, I just had to figure how to drop the gas pedal of my body. I knew walking was better than nothing so that is where I started. (for @YARNLADY too) I read up researched better alternatives to foods I was eating, multigrain bread over wheat, bran tortillas over flour, 2% milk over regular, etc. I went for 80% healthy and 20% fun then I would not seem like I was being deprived Chips Ahoy and thus be temped to cheat with them because I was thinking of them all the time.

@marinelife ” The first being that people can simply start “eating less” and “exercising more”.” What is stopping them? They have free will to start and or stop anything or are you saying they are addicted to food as a heroin addict is addicted to the drug and they can’t help it? Other than that if you have a theory why it won’t work or they can’t just start please share it with me.

@Hypocrisy_Central. A recent study in the “journal of obesity”, which examined 493 studies of weight loss found that the average weight loss after 15 weeks of healthy eating habits was 17lb. When aerobic exercise and diet were combined, average weight loss was 20lb, so in short you are better off eating yourself thin than pounding away on a treadmill. (Information from ‘Men’s Health Magazine’)

However I am not denying that the more energy you use the more food you need to eat this is particularly important in bodybuilding but not weight loss.

@dynamic3 “However I am not denying that the more energy you use the more food you need to eat this is particularly important in bodybuilding but not weight loss.” I can go with that but if you want to lose weight my thought was after you burn through the calories of the meal you ate the body will need to tap the energy in the fat cells to keep going. Like the reserve tank in a car.

People just don’t know how to lose the weight. Thats why they look for the pills. Until a few years ago I never knew how to calculate my BMR or anything. Health class doesn’t teach you how to lose weight. They teach you that if you have sex, you will die. :P
They all want to have their cake and eat it too. But to lose weight you have to make life changes. Its ridiculous.

@dynamic3, the body will burn muscle before it burns fat that’s why “crash diets” are bad, you lose muscle mass and not much fat. The Atkins diet is designed to do that, burn musle.

@prescottman2008 im sorry but i’ve got to ask you for a source for that statement because its just wrong without scientific justification. When the body enters starvation mode in extreme cases of malnutrition, yes the body deaminates the proteins in the muscles as a source of energy, which is why all the hunger starved africans on TV have no muscles, but that is only a very last resort, the body always uses metabolises other energy stores first.

Glycogenolysis is the first biological process to occur when blood sugar levels drop, whereby glycogen stores in the liver and other tissues is broken down into glucose for immediate usage. This is only meant for short term replenishment.

After that gluconeogenesis occurs which is the break down of non carbohydrate substrates such as glycerol (the main backbone for tri-glycerides i.e. fats for energy. Then ketosis the break down of the fatty acids left over from the separation of the glycerol.

Only after all these will muscle mass be broken down. This is because breaking down proteins (muscle) creates far less energy molecules per reaction than using glycogen and glycerol and so is relatively inefficient, if we broke down muscle first we would be an extinct species by now as it doesnt make ecological sense.

The point of the atkins diet is that it induces gluconeogenesis and ketosis, due to the low levels of carbohydrate in the diet, to stabilise blood sugar levels. But as it is a high protein diet, the proteins in the food you eat would be used for energy before the muscles would anyway. Also as Robert Atkins is a medical doctor he would never be able to condone such a thing as it is very unhealthy to advocate muscular atrophy.

However I do agree that crash diets are very unhealthy and should be avoided.

@dynamic3 It’s something I heard a long time ago, that in a starvation mode the body will preserve fat as an emergency back up and burn muscle mass first. I’m not a scientist of any kind. I’ve read everything you’ve just written in your response but I also seem to recall reading somewhere that American POW’s held by the Japanese in WWII even though emaciated, when examined by doctors after returning to the US were found to have normal amounts of fat around internal organs. Sorry again, I have no idea where I read that. On a side note, Dr. Atkins died an obese and generally unhealthy man, didn’t he?

@prescottman2008 No Dr Atkins was not obese and unhealthy when he died.