About Burning Calories...

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I saw something on tv about dieting myths and one of them is that carbs make you fat. No, your body NEEDS carbs, it's really too many calories that make you gain weight. If you eat more calories than you burn off by excercising they get stored into body fat. Sounds simple, right? But here's a question that's been on my mind for ages: if you're supposed to eat around 2000 calories a day just to maintain your weight, does that mean you have to excercise for hours and hours just to burn off enough so you can lose weight??? I have to pedal on my excercise bike for over 30 minutes to burn 300 calories. If I pedaled long enough to burn 2000 my heart would probably explode. I know other activities burn calories too, but not as much. I guess I'm doomed to be fat forever... Unless I eat like a rabbit and walk eight hours a day.

I am trying really hard to lose weight. I don't want to stop.

From everything I've gathered, all these 'rules of thumb' and tips and truisms are all grossly simplified. The truth of the matter is that the way our eating, our level of activity, and our weight interact is very complex.

So, for instance, when one says that "carbs make you fat" that manages to be both true and false at the same time - True in the sense that carbohydrates are a HUGE factor, and a somewhat reliable simplification, and False in the sense that we absolutely need to eat lots of carbs, and carbs consist of most of our foods and required macro-nutrient intake(raw vegetables are carbs, for instance).

There's a ton of diet ethos out there, evidenced by the wall of books on the topic you'll see at Barnes & Noble, so it's really hard to know what's true and false, what's optimal and sub-optimal.

The last book I read on the subject was in regard to the Zone diet. It seems to make a lot of sense. And the author/doctor seems as if his ideas are backed up by real data. Unfortunately, it's nigh impossible for us laymans to be able to verify it, smart though we may be.

Regardless, it's primary message, it's diet ethos, is that the key to healthy eating(and thus maintaining a healthy/desired weight) is by managing the quality of foods, managing the correct caloric intake, and managing the correct ratio of 3 types of foods/calories (Carbs, Proteins, Fats). However, among those three primary factors, it's the ratio that's the most important part.

In theory, if you ate the correct ratio, it would reduce feelings of hunger, and provides an optimal environment for your body to handle/process/use all of those macronutrients. In theory, the result is that the food doesn't get converted straight away into fat(storing food for later) because they can be used now, due to a more 'streamlined' digestion/utilization/whatever.

Furthermore, the author's stance is that most people gain weight because the things we eat are so grossly sub-optimal for processing. We flood our system with complex sugars(lots of dense sugar/carbs - more sugar per bite) like grain products, bread, corn starch, and other processed foods. Therefore, in the typical western diet, especially Americans', what's contributing disproportionately to making us fat are WHEAT and CORN products, mostly. So, to oversimplify, bread is bad for you, as is anything that can be bought in a sealed box.

Nominally, those sugars would also come with a good dose of proteins, and fats, as those are all used together in our body's processing system. Instead, we get sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, fat, protien. A little bit of the sugar gets processed alongside the fat and protein, but the majority of it simply couldn't get used because there's too much of it, too quick. And thus it gets transformed into body fat. Save it for later.

A while after I read the two books I got on the subject, I tried to adjust my diet to a very specific plan. But I ended up breaking from it because I was broke as heck, and could afford nothing but the cheapest food (grain products, primarily). And due to transportation issues, I couldn't shop as often as I needed to.

However, I did follow some of the concepts (if not the plan) in a simplified manner:
Eat some small amount of lean meat with every meal, eat lots of raw vegetables.
Raw vegetables are generally simple sugars - Takes up lots of space in your stomach, takes longer to digest, gives less sugar. Therefore, by eating tons of vegetables, you're making filling your stomach, making yourself full, with very non-dense carbs. Less sugar per bite, less calories per bite, but just as many bites.

I have been losing weight, although not as fast 'as advertised,' since I'm not following this diet's proposed plan.

In summary: Stop eating bread, stop eating wheat, rice, corn, and processed foods made from those. They are bad for you, and make you fat. Eat as many raw vegetables as possible. It's good to eat less in general, but if you're going to eat, then it's better to eat the right things. Eating the wrong things makes more impact than eating too much.

Btw, this is one of the books, here. Cheap!! I got mine for $6 after shipping.
And it reads quickly - lots of pages, but a large font, and very easy to read.
I suggest getting it - There's little to lose, as it reads so fast and is so cheap, but it's jam packed with solid info. LOTS to gain.

Whatsername on TV, actress on infomercial, she said this different thing that does make sense to me (haven't tried it myself yet): -

"Wear ankle weights and/or wrist weights around the house."

Passive exercise - what a great idea!

a simple mantra to remember, is "If it's white, it ain't right." iow, if it is a refined carb like white refined flour or sugar or starch, or it's white fatty oil or grease, avoid it like the liver-rending artery-clogger it is. if you do just that one thing, you are guaranteed to lose weight and keep it off, presuming one is not totally inactive.

1) Eat less. Cut out soda (this includes Diet Sodas).
2) Walk 1 hour or more per day, in a park, at brisk pace. Forget exercise bikes. They are ineffective and boring.
3) WIN.

Good stuff from Auntblabby & Monsterland...

Never heard that saying about 'if it's white' - Good call. Pretty much on the mark... flour is the poster-child of processed food. But personally my impression is that even whole grain ain't that hot either.

From an anthropological perspective, grains aren't what we're meant to eat. At earliest, we've been eating grains for a few thousand years. Not near enough time to adapt to. In comparison, we've been eating stuff like boar & foraged fruit & veg & roots for millions of years.

The thing about the idea of "Eat Less" though, I think that if one's gonna falter on one thing - either quantity, quality, or exercise - I think faltering on quality and exercise are a worse alternative than eating too much.
...Just my impression though....

And cutting out soda, yeah, that's huge... And juice too, it's nearly the same in impact. For the purpose of weight, juice is no good. I used to drink tons of juice and soda, but have managed to cut them out of my diet. Maybe one soda a week, some juice every 3 days.... The only way I managed to do that was by making water drinking EXTREMELY convenient. I have a nalgene bottle I take everywhere now. So I drink lots of water. I also used to drink a lot of tea, just took the kettle into my room as I worked at the computer.

At first, it sucks, and it takes some will, but after you get used to drinking plain water(or, more accurately, getting used to not having a sweet drink), it's no big deal. We're spoiled, really, with all the sweet stuff we're surrounded by, and we cheapen how good plain food actually is by having sugar in everything. Kinda like how if you haven't had anything to eat or drink for a while, and are really thirsty, and you drink some "Vitamin Water" (lol, btw...), it tastes really good, its sweet. But say you've recently had a soda, and then drink that same Vitamin Water? It tastes lame.
Same idea - the more often we eat super-sweet things, the less we appreciate non-sweet things.

....Even though I have nothing to back this is up, I feel as if drinking more water has helped my health & weight. So, *shrug* take that as you will.

It was even on the news last night, a new study about women and 1 hr of exercise per day after a certain age. Saw it on the tv news, but I think this is the same:

http://www.efitnessnow.com/news/2010/03 ... u-healthy/

I dunno about the science and theory. But here's what I did:

I cut my grain consumption (Wheat, Oats, Rye etc.) down massively, and added a lot more good quality fatty foods like walnut, avocado, flax, hemp, fish, eggs etc. Fats are denser in calories than carbs, so you need to eat less for the same energy. One of the problems with modern ideas about weight loss is that low calorie food = good. That's nonsense. I think the hubbub about sat fats is probably over the top as well. I suspect that sat fats are fine in moderation.

For carbs, I eat brown rice, sweet potatoes, and other root vegetables.

Likewise, replace sugars with fruit and honey. Honey is nutrient dense and good for you. Eating white sugar is tantamount to just adding extra fat to your body. Don't eat unnatural sweeteners, like aspartame and sucralose.

I think one of the qualities of poor foods that makes all the difference is addictiveness. Wheat for example has (so I've read) psychotropic qualities which make you want to eat more. Sugar is also said to be addictive. Kicking bad foods can be hard.

Eating good quality whole foods rather than processed makes the greatest difference. Eating right in the first place is the key to getting to a good healthy weight. Calorie burning/exercise is far less important in my view. Still important, just don't overdo it.

My appetite is much less these days. I'm bordering on anorexic thin these days, if that's not too insensitive for me to state. Time to bulk up.

The energy in one pound of fat is 3500 calories.

Let's say, for example, that if you eat 2000 calories per day, you don't get fatter or thinner. A big, muscular, young man will need more, and a small, middle-aged woman will need less, but 2000 is about average. If you start eating 2500 calories per day (and not changing your activity level), then at the end of seven days, you will have eaten 3500 (500 x 7 )calories more than you burned. Those extra calories will be stored as a pound of fat. (Calories are a unit of energy, not an actual "thing", but we talk about calories as if they are "things". Strange, but there it is.)

On the other hand, if you start eating only 1500 calories per day (and not change your activity level), then at the end of the week you will have eaten 3500 calories less than you burned, so you will lose a pound of fat.

Or you could eat the same amount as usual (2000 calories in this example), but also increase your activity level so that you are burning 500 calories per day. You'll lose a pound of fat if you do that for 7 days.

All calories come from either carbohydrates, proteins, or fats. (Or alcohol, which might count as a form of carb, I'm not sure.) Carbs and proteins are 4 calories per gram. Fats are 9 calories per gram. You need a combination of all of them.

You don't have to try to burn 2000 calories on the treadmill. You burn calories just sitting and thinking. If you want to lose weight (fat), you just need to eat a bit less and exercise a bit more. Easier said than done, I know.

>According to recent findings, vitamin D is linked to (among other things) our body fat stores.

If this is true, then it seems likely that sunshine promotes fat loss. More reason to ditch the in-door fitness equipment.

this is an interesting podcast / page about vitamin D - this is usually a podcast about computer security, but they featured a whole episode on vitamin D!
http://www.grc.com/health/Vitamin-D.htm