Help me lose weight

[Elf Witch]

This whole idea of 'toxins' in the diet is generally a bunch of hooey you see in health food stores. Green Tea may taste yummy and have a decent amount of vitamins in it, but it's nothing special.



And that's completely false. Most diet sodas have 0 calories and at most 1 or 2% of your daily intake of sodium. Many diet sodas have no sodium at all. It's a myth that diet soda is bad for you when you're dieting.

Diet soda has literally no impact on your diet unless you're drinking liters of it per day over a prolonged period of time (in which case it might impact your kidneys in the long term due to the caramel color used in darker sodas. However you'd be 100 times worse off if it was regular soda you were drinking, or even tap water in many areas).


I personally lost 50lbs in under a year and have kept it off for around 7 years now. What you eat and how much you eat doesn't matter, just your caloric intake and how many calories you use per day in terms of activity. That's it. There's no magic about certain foods etc. Any diet can conceivably work, but some may be easier to handle, or keep you less hungry (Atkins type diets tends to make you full faster but can also raise cholesterol depending on what you're eating).

Caffeine is neither good nor bad. Caffeine by itself increases fatty acid metabolism, this isn't up for debate. Recently there are slight indications that in some people it may increase insulin resistance. However the jury is still out on this one, and it's a single study that in some ways contradicts several other previous studies that I've seen. That study also used pure caffeine and not caffeine in coffee or tea where it would be mixed with other compounds, may of which are healthy in and of themselves as well.

And for an anecdote: I'm on about 4-6 shots of espresso a day and it's not hurting me.

Water is pushed around a lot, but it won't do much besides maybe trick your body into thinking its not as hungry. There's also a lot of myths about how the average person doesn't get enough water, or people are chronically dehydrated, etc etc and that's all complete bunk. It can't hurt you in normal amounts, though every year a few people die of drinking too much water in a given period of time, but that's very VERY rare. If you're doing a lot of exercise however, it's good to replenish what you lose by perspiration.

Several studies have come out that have shown that drinking green tea is good for you because it is full of antioxidants. It is also full of the same plant chemicals that help prevent colon cancer.

The reason water is pushed for people who are trying to lose weight is that is fills you up with no calories it is that simple. But there are people who do not get enough fluids in their diets and this causes problems like kidney stones, and dehydration. My roommate has been taken to the hospital twice because she has suffered from dehydration. The simple reason is she only drinks coke literaly eats no fruits or veggies except french fries. People don't realize a lot of your fluid intake comes from the food you eat.

As for soda I used to drink a lot of diet soda, 8 months ago I gave it up because I started taking a medicine that just made anything carbonated taste really bad. I have noticed a big change since I stopped drinking it. My ankles and finger were always swollen not anymore as a matter of fact my shoes don't fit they are to big now.

I sleep through the night now. I used to suffer from insomnia most likely from the caffine. But the biggest chage that I am the happiest with is I no longer live on antacids and laxatives the soda was playing havoc with my entire GI tract.

 

[Xath]

Uh, milk is extremely fattening. You'd be surprised what moving from whole milk to 1% milk will do for someone. Skim is best, of course, but I still haven't brought myself to drink skim. Looks too much like water to me. We drink 1%.

Gah, I've been drinking Skim since I was 10; whole milk is like cream.

Anyway, as far as advice goes, I lost 15 pounds when I stopped drinking soda.

 

[Torm]

Whole milk is REAL milk. Skim is what you give to the dog.

And some types of fats are healthy.

 

[ASH]

I am beating a dead horse here... but the best way to loose wieght and keep it off is total life style change. Exercise more, eat better, more healthy foods. Think of getting healthy and not of loosing wieght... the two are connected.

 

[der_kluge]

I was completely blown away when the FDA came out with their new revised "food pyramid" and a big chunk of that pyramid indicates that we should be drinking lots of milk. Mularkey. I wonder how much the dairy board paid the FDA officials to put that in there. It's proposterous to believe that grown animals need to continue to drink milk to be healthy.

I drink milk because Froot Loops don't taste as good in water or coke.


And no one has given me any scientific evidence to show that drinking gobs and gobs of water will help you lose weight. I'm still waiting on that. Oh, I've seen a lot of guesses and speculation, but nothing scientific. I'm just not buying that one.

And this idea that we need to drink 8 glasses of water a day is also hogwash. I don't think I've ever drank 8 glasses of anything in a single day, except for that 1 time in my life I got drunk. Yes, once. Getting drunk is not high on my list of things to do.

My belief is that the body will tell me when I should have a drink, and so forcing water down myself all the time is simply a waste of time, and has about as much credibility to as say astrology, or palmistry.

 

[Torm]

My belief is that the body will tell me when I should have a drink, and so forcing water down myself all the time is simply a waste of time, and has about as much credibility to as say astrology, or palmistry.

You may be right - I don't know - but I thought the idea behind drinking a lot of water was to help flush our systems of all the other synthetic junk in some of our food and other drink, and artificial radiations from human activities in our food and atmosphere, that our bodies don't have any other natural way to handle than to just try to flush them.

Regardless, though, I like water - I was already drinking more than 8 glasses a day back when it wasn't cool.

 

[Eolin]

And no one has given me any scientific evidence to show that drinking gobs and gobs of water will help you lose weight. I'm still waiting on that. Oh, I've seen a lot of guesses and speculation, but nothing scientific. I'm just not buying that one.

And this idea that we need to drink 8 glasses of water a day is also hogwash. I don't think I've ever drank 8 glasses of anything in a single day, except for that 1 time in my life I got drunk. Yes, once. Getting drunk is not high on my list of things to do.

My belief is that the body will tell me when I should have a drink, and so forcing water down myself all the time is simply a waste of time, and has about as much credibility to as say astrology, or palmistry.

This is close to right. So close.

Here's at least pseudo-scientific evidence for why you should drink water. The body knows how to use water really well, and can use it to help clean you of other the other crap you bring in -- coke, booze, meat toxins, etc etc. Water goes through the body and helps pick up bad, undigestable things to be removed. Without enough water (or other such things, like lemon juice), the toxins continue to build up.

Also, if you don't drink enough water the body builds up water fat -- we start storing the water because the body thinks we're in a drought. So to potentially save our lives, we keep lots and lots of water. And get sick, because we arn't using the water to remove crap from the body.

Drink water, it does a body good.

As for your body telling this -- this is absolutely true, but only under certain conditions. Those conditions being that you know how to listen. I used to crave coke. Now I cannot stand it. I craved it simply because it was how my body was accostomed to getting liquids -- so it asked me for more of it.

Now, even the thought of it makes me gag a little. Its ridiculously sweet. Anyway, the point is that the body will tell us, but how we interpret the body depends upon the chemical state of our body.

 

[der_kluge]

You may be right - I don't know - but I thought the idea behind drinking a lot of water was to help flush our systems of all the other synthetic junk in some of our food and other drink, and artificial radiations from human activities in our food and atmosphere, that our bodies don't have any other natural way to handle than to just try to flush them.

Here's at least pseudo-scientific evidence for why you should drink water. The body knows how to use water really well, and can use it to help clean you of other the other crap you bring in -- coke, booze, meat toxins, etc etc. Water goes through the body and helps pick up bad, undigestable things to be removed. Without enough water (or other such things, like lemon juice), the toxins continue to build up.

Also, if you don't drink enough water the body builds up water fat -- we start storing the water because the body thinks we're in a drought. So to potentially save our lives, we keep lots and lots of water. And get sick, because we arn't using the water to remove crap from the body.

"toxins"
"bad, undigestable things"
"crap"
"meat toxins"
"artificial radiations"
"synthetic junk"
"water fat"

WOW.

Don't tell me you guys believe this garbage? I mean, do you hear what you're saying? This is like believing that if you swallow bubble gum, it sits and festers in your stomach for 7 years. This is complete, and utter hogwash.

I swear, the science of food and diet has become the next "feng shui" or "accupuncture" of our day, hasn't it? You'd be spouting as much science if you told me that magnets help get rid of back problems.

As John Stossel would say:

GIVE ME A BREAK!

 

[Harmon]

Couple of suggestions (as there are a lot of good ones here)- I know you said you are walking and working out, but when you park your car at a store, the movies or where ever, park at the far end of the lot, this will mean walking just a little more. Stand on one foot while you wait in any lines- this increases your balance and helps your core strength. While sitting still tighten your core in long pulses, it will help very little but it will help.

Last suggestion three suggestions- (this works for me) get a job that is physically demanding, wear a camel pack full of water at work, and eat only protein at work.

Good luck.

 

[Torm]

WOW.

Don't tell me you guys believe this garbage?

I take no credit for any of what Eolin added, which isn't to say I disagree with all of it either, but are you telling me that you don't believe that humanity has increased the levels of ambient radiation on the planet by an unnatural amount, or that we take in many more artificial food additives, than our ancestors from even just a century ago? Or is it that you don't believe that water is used in the bodily processes that flush toxins (like uric acid, for example) and other unhealthy materials from our systems?....

Gone to pee lately? Noticed the liquid consistency? Ever noticed that it smells funny if you eat Sugar Smacks? What's THAT all about?

(Oh - as for Stossel: You might want to see this.)