Posted on 08/30/2012 12:37:39 PM PDT by neverdem
Well, I have to admit, that sometimes I can’t tell if my shoes are tied.
LMAO!
The problem you’re talking about and this thread are both caused by the same thing. Too many carbs in the diet. The carbs cause belly fat and the belly fat produces hormones (testosterone in females and estrogen in males).
Believe me this is tough problem. Low carb diet plus exercise is the cure but of course that’s easier said than done.
I’ve noticed kids have really bad diets these days. They’re fed carbs constantly from the time they’re babies (Cheerios & such) Most of the teachers I know give candy to kids at school.
“Most people just don’t have the long term discipline to lose the pear/apple shape.”
I could not disagree more.
95% of the people on diets fail—95%. When 95% of people fail to reach a goal, then the problem isn’t with the people, the problem is the approach they are taking to accomplishing the goal.
Does discipline and exercise work for some people? Yea, 5% of people. But, for the other 95% it is very much the wrong approach (otherwise it would work for more than 5%).
I’ve lost over 40 pounds since Jan 1. I have not exercised (not once), I have not counted calories, I haven’t done any portion control, and I don’t put up with being hungry—when I’m hungry I eat till I’m not hungry (even if it is between meals).
I’m basically following the advice in the book “Why We Get Fat.” It recommends that instead of worrying about calories you change the TYPE of food you are eating. I quit eating processed foods and I cut down on the amount of carbs. That’s it, nothing more. I find that I don’t get as hungry and I fill up easier, consequently I’m losing weight—effortlessly.
This is the first time in 20 years I’ve been even close to a normal weight. And, I had tried every approach (including calorie counting and morning exercise on a treadmill). It was always a grind and struggle to keep up, and in the end I always failed to either lose weight or keep it off.
This time, there was no struggle. The weight just seemed to fall off. And, I’m confident I can keep it off. On top of that, I feel better and my doctor says I’ve gone from being a future heart attack victim to “fantastic.”
All without exercise or counting calories.
No they won’t always be the same. You can do exercises and tone areas, more muscles, burn fat, tighten the skin. Your genes dictate where your body will store fat, and how eager it is to build fat to store, but they do NOT dictate that you will be fat.
Not all carbs are bad...
Isnt there an over the counter drug like pepsid that counteracts some of the MAST cell effects?
I don’t think it’s the belly, I think it is the stress that makes us eat and drink to create the belly and our body responding to the stress. But who am I?
When my mother died she weighed 86 pounds. She barely ate anything for the last few years of her life yet she died with an apple shape. She worked her buns off until she couldn’t anymore. I’m apple-shaped too and do work out, but not like a body builder so yes, it’s genetic. Power to those apple-shaped people who lose the belly fat. It’s *very* hard to do. The mast cell thing is a very big issue too. Whoever learns how to turn off the mast cells will be a billionaire!
Look up the term "skinny fat"..that is what you will be.
W/o weight training (what both men AND woman should be doing) you are burning through muscle as well fat during your weight loss. The 40 lb you lost was I bet a significant amount of muscle. Every credible fitness/weight loss program out there today emphasises weight training. I work out at a university gym that is part of a hospital medical program and they push weight training as #1..even before cardio..though cardio is very important. They tell the womnan to pump that iron...and they do.
And you need cardio for heart strength, joint health, circulation etc..
But you can do what you want..
Did I say carbs were bad? No. I said our carb intake has exploded (from 1/3 of our daily calories to 2/3 of our daily calories).
THAT is a problem.
Thanks! Just last week I purchased Wheat Belly!
I should say that I have been mostly gluten free since being diagnosed with RA, and 6 years later am absolutely med free. My dr. told me early on that I would be crippled if I did not take the poison she recommended for RA. I did my homework and now have an insignificant flare only every now and then (when I eat bread, usually!). Made lots of dietary changes, am gluten free, drink red wine, eat mostly vegetables and fruit (not too much - carbs!), red meat just once or twice monthly, lots of fish, bought a water pick to take good care of gums (important for stifling inflammation), walk 4-5 miles a day, take my vitamins and a large dose of fish oil.
I feel great, but still, am apple-shaped.
Is there a doctor in the house to confirm that apples are are apples forever?
No it’s with the people. The first mistake almost everybody makes when they go on a diet is they consider it a temporary change, they’re going to do all this exercise and restructure their diet until they hit their target weight and then go back to normal. Everybody that starts in that direction is guaranteed to fail, even if they hit their target weight they balloon right back up because “normal” is what got them fat in the first place.
People need to realize it’s a religious conversion. There’s how you were and how you are. Of course even then, how many folks who change religion really stick in the new religion. Same problem with dieting.
It takes a lot of will power to completely change one of the most basic things of how you live. Especially when all the stuff you’ll be editing out is so much easier to find/ prepare/ eat than the new stuff.
I didn’t say exercise was bad. I said exercise wasn’t required to reduce body fat, and it’s not.
I plan on starting a regular exercise regime when I get down to a specific weight (which, if things keep going as expected should be in Jan/Feb time frame). My problem in the past (as it is with many overweight people) is that I was carrying so much excess body fat, that it made any type of meaningful exercise all but impossible.
The “typical” fat person doesn’t burn enough calories during exercise to cause any meaningful weight loss. On the other hand, it can be so physically and mentally stressful that it becomes something they want to avoid—thus causing them to sabotage the entire weight loss program.
Telling someone that is very overweight to “just exercise more” is not good advice, not for that person.
I agree it has to be a permanent change.
But, should calorie counting be permanent? What you are recommending is that people turn their lives into one long math problem. That may work for people who are mathematically inclined, but it won’t work for everyone.
Again, when 95% of people fail to accomplish a goal using a specific approach (in this case calorie counting), then the problem is the approach, not the people.
I do know they have bad diets (my degree is in exercise physiology) and I tend toward lower carb diets as a more natural diet for humans based much less on grains etc. However, I wonder about other things. But, I’m not going there here as it would start a knock down drag out fight that I don’t have any desire to get into, since it has to do with mothers and infants and is likely to make about 80% of the readers angry with me.
Depends on how they do it. I refused to count calories, I just paid attention to intake quantity and quality while dramatically increasing exercise and burned off 65 pounds in a couple of year. And that’s permanent and I’ve kept it off for the most part (got a little weak last year, burning that back off this year). If my method was calorie counting then that’s what I’d be sticking to. If it was carb counting then I’d stick to that.
95% of people fail regardless of method. All diets have basically identical success rates. People need to find what works for them and understand that it has to be permanent so they REALLY need to find the method that works for them. One of my co-workers burned off twice as much as I did in half the time. We compared notes and I knew I could never do what he did, too much giving up foods I dearly love, WAY too much gym time, I’d have given up in 2 weeks. Drug and alcohol rehab suffers from the same problem, all the various programs have nearly identical sadly small success rates.
I always tell people that the first step in any major life change is “know who you are”, because that’s the ground you have to work with. If you’re not a calorie counter don’t follow a calorie counting diet. If beer and bread are serious sources of life joy for you stay far away from all the Atkins variants. Every person has a method that will work for them, the question is can they find it. I went on my path reading a lot of websites, ignoring stuff that made me groan, remember stuff that I thought I could live with. I basically wound up creating a numberless version of Weight Watchers, which works for me because I can handle life in a fuzzy math world filled with reminding myself that I know better. Other people can’t live in a world where they don’t order onion rings because they love onion rings and won’t stop when they’re sated (yes that’s an actual rule of my diet, I only get onion rings if the rest of the meal will be small or I’m committed to extra exercise, I can leave fries on the plate).
I never said that..except to the pear/apple people.
Diet is 75% of weight loss and what I mean by diet is eating right..I hate fad diets.
If you are not eating right you can work out 3 hours in the gym every day and it is all for not.
And I disagree that excercise should not be a part of weight loss even with super obese people. Obese people should not run(bad for heart/joints) until they lose weight but ellipticals and weight training is fine and it helps keeps stress down and releases good endorphines creating a sense of euphoria.
Not everyone should consume grains. Some of us have allergies/sensitivities to them. Unfortunately there isn’t really any blanket diet advice. I would agree that not all carbs are bad, as humans are designed to eat some carbohydrates, but not the highly refined ones and probably not in the massive amounts we consume today. And maybe (and I say maybe) not some of the highly hybridized versions we eat. Corn for instance has not been in the European diet for more than about 500 years.
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