weight loss programs that are good for aspies?

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Hi i am very overweight i am 160 lbs and only 4"11

ive been trying to loose weight but i cant on my own.

now not only do i appear "weird" to people i am also fat so i have a worse chance on making friends and perhaps finding a guy for me one day.

but besides looks its just not healthy for me to be this over weight. can anyone recommend a weight losss programs that is understanding of special needs. Like which would be better Jenny craig or Curves or weight watchers ect. please somebody help

Three approaches which have helped me to lose weight, and keep it off, are:

1) Eating concentrated proteins ( meat, fish, cheese, and eggs ), and starchy carbohydrates ( bread, pasta, potatoes, corn, rice, etc ), at separate meals, at least four hours apart. This also seems to reduce the number of colds I get each year, from about 5 or 6 to just one or two. And helps digestion too.

2) A gluten-free diet. Cut out all wheat, rye, and barley, plus other products with gluten in them. This has had a hugely positive effect on not only my weight, but also my mental health, ( mood and cognitive functioning ). Gluten contains food opioid peptides which suppress appetite suppressants and creates cravings for more wheat and carbohydrates in general. It is now known that 1% of the population have celiac disease and as many as 1 in 10 may have some sort of gluten sensitivity; the damage done to physical and mental health by constant auto-immune system reactions to gluten entering the body are wideranging and profound.

3) A low carbohydrate diet which allows you to eat as much as you want of anything apart from carbohydrates. Very good for energy levels and weight loss and health in general.

Good luck!
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The only thing that ever worked for me was the Atkins-style no carb, no-starch-of-any-kind protein regimen (potatoes and white bread are the devil's poison). Even then I cut portions to near starvation level for several months. But I always allowed myself freedom to have whatever I wanted on weekends, Friday evening to Sunday afternoon.

The trick is not just getting it off - most people can work up the determination to sprint once in awhile - you have to keep it off, and that's a lifelong marathon.

That means developing an obsession with exercise. Find a routine that you can enjoy and make it a daily part of your life - never miss or skip it, rain or shine. I feel guilty and agitated if I have to miss my daily workout for any reason. There's a specific time of day (evening for me) when I simply have to drop whatever else I'm doing and go exercise for a predetermined period of time in order for my day to be complete.

But at 50, I'm only one waist size larger than I was at 21 (I didn't work out then), and I am by no means 'naturally thin'.

The article on Wikipedia (not that Wikipedia is the greatest source of information . . .) says that gluten sensitivity "affects as much as 35 to 50 percent of the U.S. population." I don't know what the figures look like for other countries, but that's pretty high. I've read in several places that more people are gluten sensitive than lactose intolerant . . . and lactose intolerance is so wide-spread that there have been commercial prodcuts (ex. lactaid) available for it during most of my lifetime.

I havne't been tested, but it's a safe bet that I'm gluten sensitive because when I started getting nasty heartburn in my 30s and was diagnosed with GERD, I did an elimination diet (on my own. My doctor just wanted to fill me full of drugs and send me home) and realized that the only food that gives me heartburn are gluten foods - bread, tortillas, crackers, ramen, etc. So long as I avoid the gluten, I have zero heartburn.

I have read that gluten sensitivity will pack the pounds on if a person keeps eating gluten foods. So I think you gave good advice to include that in your list.

Sparrow

Gluten seems to be the recognized culprit here, too. Since I cut out gluten, I have lost weight. If I slip up and consume any, I actually feel ill, as well as extremely irritable, and I start to crave it all over again. Plus I feel drugged. I have come up with a meal replacement shake that outshines anything those organized weight loss programs provide. Since I am also lactose intolerant, I make a smoothie out of soy or rice milk, 1 banana, some strawberries, and a tablespoon of ground flax seed. I actually don't feel hungry again for about 3 hours. This only works if I haven't been eating gluten.

Another milk alternative that's easy to make/use is almond milk. Two heaping tablespoons of almond butter and two cups of water in the blender makes almond milk. Then add in your fruit and other ingredients and blend. It's very creamy and very filling. The one caveat for weight watching is that it's higher in fat and calories than soy or rice milk (but still not bad as part of an overall careful diet.) A side bonus is that, if you go with a raw almond butter (like Living Tree Organics) the almond milk/fruit/flax smoothie is also 100% raw (for those pursuing a raw lifestyle. I'm not trying to push raw but that has been my personal success story for health and weight loss.)

Sparrow

That sounds delicious!

Well whatever my parents buy to put in the fridge is what I have to work with. I DO not have varieties of healthy items to eat to try to eat better. I might as well save the weight loss attempts later in life when I buy my own groceries and live independantly. I'm not good at communicating my needs to my parents so yeah. BTW, I am 190 lbs and 5'11". However, I have a huge glob of fat around the belly which I would imagine weighs 15 lbs.

Oh, nowadays I eat sourdough bread a lot (weird favorite food) so there goes my favorite gluten item :[
Should I take out olive oil from my diet too? That's good for bread dipping but I overuse it.

I use the GI Diet which is very easy to follow, I have the opposit problem too
tall 5.8 and 94lbs, I am diabetic and have to watch my carb intake closely
http://www.the-gi-diet.org/whatisthegidiet/

There's a perfect example of how two people's bodies can be so different! (Which is why I will still sometimes talk about what I'm doing and mention common problems that someone might want to look at but back off when someone tries to cast me in the role of nutrition counselor (and, yes, I have had people try to do that to me many times.)

I tried the GI diet as part of my efforts to battle type 2 diabetes and it actually made my diabetes worse! It has made your diabetes better. Isn't the human body fascinating and complex?

What finally worked for me was actually a *high* carb diet . . . but high in particular types of carbs, mainly fresh, raw, ripe fruit. The more fresh fruit (and low to very low fat) I ate, the better my diabetes got. Now I am completely off diabetes meds and only have to go back on if I stop being vigilant about what I'm eating. I have to avoid grains entirely and all animal products as my joints start hurting if I start eating meat or dairy.

My diabetes clinic had a fit when I told them I wasn't going to eat the diet they were prescribing (including ground beef five times a day! Expensive and kind of yuck to me.) But when I came back in three months later and they ran all my tests, my main doctor said "I don't know what you're doing, but keep doing it. I wish all my patients showed this kind of progress."

But it's not one-size fits-all. I've talked to others who didn't thrive on a diet like mine and did thrive on the program of a particular doctor (I think his name is Bernal?) who recommends an almost zero carb diet - it looks a lot like Atkins. When I try to eat Atkins, I lose the ability to walk!

The closest I will come to recommending a diet for anyone else is to say do a lot of research and carefully, carefully experiment with your body. Take careful notes on what you are eating and how it causes your body to respond. Give any dietary change at least two weeks to see the effects (unless you are getting serious, allergy-type effects, of course.) If you have a problem that isn't getting better, resarch "elimination diets" and try it on yourself, keeping careful notes, to see if there is a food or food group that is making your issue worse.

And try to maintain a balance. Read about "orthorexia nervosa" and become aware of it so that you can work to avoid it. Be careful, be healthy, and never turn foods into "good" and "bad" or guilt-inducing substances. Foods are neutral and some may not be compatible but it doesn't do any good to feel guilty or like a cheater if you eat a food that doesn't like you as much as you like it.

Sparrow

Hmm, interesting...

I really need to drop a pound or two. Lately I've been adding muscle mass but I've been adding waistline too.

I might try to cut down on my gluten intake, but I can't stop drinking hefeweizen.

Cutting down on something is, in my experience, more difficult than eliminating it because cutting down means measuring and calculating things to make sure they're staying under whatever level I've determined is "cutting down."

Also, if you just cut down, you'll never really know if gluten is something you should avoid or something that isn't effecting you. If you're really serious about looking into gluten as a possible source of some of your discomfort/dis-ease/issues, consider committing to 30 days gluten free. You can go without hefeweizen (or any other beer. There are gluten-free beers but they're extremely difficult to find) for one month if you know that you aren't saying you'll never have hefeweizen ever again, just not for 30 days while you decide if gluten is your friend or not.

If you stop eating bread and crackers and pasta and tortillas but keep drinking beer once a week you'll be wasting your time and going without bread and crackers and pasta and tortillas for nothing. Making such a dramatic change in your diet is difficult and can be stressful. Think on whether it's worth taking half-measures and what you would expect to get/learn from doing it half-way.

Sparrow

^

Yeah, I get what you're saying... Bread crackers and tortillas aren't a huge part of my diet (I bought my first loaf of bread in months today as a matter of fact...).

My diet consists mainly of a bit of pasta and vast amounts of rice, oats, veggies, beans, eggs, poultry/beef/pork, milk, coffee, tea, and beer--honey is the only sweetener I use.

I wouldn't miss the pasta at all. The beer would be sorely missed, but with school going, cutting out the beer would vastly improve my productivity...

I might give it a serious go and see how I feel.

If you do go for it, cut the oats out as well. There is gluten cross-contamination in most oats and certified gluten-free oats are pretty expensive.

Best wishes!

Sparrow

One thing to change easily, is maybe ask for sprouted wheat bread? It's carried in the freezer section of the grocery store. That's the kind that I use.

Olive oil is actually good for you. If you use the sprouted wheat bread, and just cut back a bit on the quantity of olive oil used, that will be a good start. Also, I remember reading someplace that sourdough bread is alright for gluten free diets, but I am not sure. You might want to research this.

My routine: 300calorie meal every 3 hours, sticking to a daily macronutrient ratio of about 55/30/15 whenever possible and doing 45minutes on a stationary exercise bike each day - I plan on increasing the meal size slightly once I reach a weight I like.

It might not work for others but it's definetly worked for me, I've cut down from 238lb to 180lb in a little under three months and I haven't deviated from the routine once to skip exercise or have a snack - eating regularly like this completely suppresses hunger.

Maybe it's only worked for me because I've become somewhat obsessed with it, making spreadsheets to calculate the daily macronutrient percentages etc...