silverharp wrote: » I havnt seen this programme , but what is wrong with the statement that people weren’t obese in the past before people knew anything about calories?
silverharp wrote: » I havnt seen this programme , but what is wrong with the statement that people weren’t obese in the past before people knew anything about calories? To make the same point someone on twitter showed a piece of footage from new York around 1910 and there wasn’t a single obese person in all the footage.
NeonCookies wrote: » Myself and my boyfriend are both overweight. We don't eat horrendously unhealthily (as in we're not stuffing our faces with crisps and chocolate every day!), it's more a collection of bad habits, particularly portion sizes. We will hopefully start a family in a year or two and I'd love us to be as healthy as can be for that. We're both good cooks and makes all sauces etc from scratch so at least we're not starting from nothing. I want it to be sustainable so I've been thinking of 12 steps - each month has a specific focus with the idea being to form a habit and then add to it! To start I've got: 1. Focus on having at least 5 portions of fruit and veg per day - currently we only get 2-3 which is awful 2. Seriously focus on portion sizes, particularly of carbs (the idea of having the veg step before this is that this one will be easier and probably happen naturally with more veg on the plate) 3. At least 2 veggie dinners per week (we already have some fab recipes that we've enjoyed, we can just be lazy about them sometimes) 4. Move more - get out for at least 2 walks during the week, and one long walk at weekends ... that's the general idea, could anyone add some more ideas? Trying to link them with the seasons too e.g. a goal regarding salads or something during the summer months, to set us up for success and make it enjoyable!
Penn wrote: » The issue was people didn't have the same access to calorie-dense food as they do now. Rich foods were the luxury then, whereas now because its made so cheap and easily available, people eat more of it as the norm. There weren't ready made meals, or takeaways, or fast food, not to the extent there is now and not to the extent of how people eat that sort of food now. That's why they didn't need to count calories back then and why we kinda do now (particularly in the case of what the discussion was about, which was how to lose weight). Again, it's bull****, but it's wrapped in a half-truth. People didn't count calories back then and obesity wasn't such a problem. That's true. But it completely ignores something which has had a fundamental change on people's diets nowadays which means counting calories can be very important.
silverharp wrote: » The choice is count calories if you must eat everything in moderation several times a day or don’t count calories and eat similar to the way people did a 100 years ago and trust your appetite. Choose what works best for you, but the first approach doesn’t seem to work for a lot of people as evidenced by the size of the “diet” industry.
Macy0161 wrote: » I'm not sure someone immediately switching to the diet of a 100 years ago is any more sustainable than any other crash diet. It's too big a change, and people a 100 years ago didn't have the choices in front of them. But if someone did take that approach, and it worked, the same as every other "diet" it would be because of going into calorie deficit. Calories in being less than calories out remains the only scientifically proven method of losing weight. The diet industry is because people want the easy option, not because calorie counting doesn't work. Calorie counting fails because of user input, mainly the under estimation of calories or portions. But also an over estimation of calories burned through apps and activity trackers. There's an interesting example of over estimation of food, in an interesting article, that was in the guardian today...https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jan/05/truth-obesity-five-fat-myths-debunked
silverharp wrote: » There is more to it than deficit, some types of food can be addictive , like sugar based or the “lethal” combination of high sugar high fat which override satiety signals and cause metabolic damage like insulin resistance. Why would you decide what is too big a change for someone? I’d say its easier for some people to effectively cut out processed carbs and sugar for example rather than moderating how much they are “allowed” to eat. Given that sugar sometimes gets compared to cocaine, you wouldn’t insist every cocaine user moderates their intake? Some people are just better off giving it up because its too difficult to walk the tightrope People are complicated and have all kinds of blind spots, at the end of the day though whatever someone does it probably ought not be “will power” based, it needs to habit based and enjoyable to follow. From my perspective I enjoy what I do because every time I eat, I eat until I am full so I don’t stress about it, I just need to be mindful not to over eat too much in the way of really high calorie food like cheese or nuts because the “ratio” of calories to satiety isn’t great.
Macy0161 wrote: » There's no scientific consensus or proof that sugar or high sugar foods are actually addictive. Some studies have said that sugar is as addictive as cocaine, but thats not the same as proven. I don't see supposed sugar addicts spooning in the granulated sugar or mainlining golden syrup. My point is that, in my opinion, a big bang approach doesn't work, is why most diets fail, and I'd see an immediate change to a 100 year old diet the same. Not necessarily unsustainable as an end point, but as a beginning point.
Macy0161 wrote: » I prefer to stick to scientific proof. Not studies that "suggest" what "may" be the case. People comfort eat foods that taste nice. Like I said, I don't see supposed sugar addicts just eating a bowl of sugar to get their fix. I don't believe a big bang approach works for most people. That's why diets fail and are unsustainable, imo. But whatever works for an individual, long term, works for them.
Deise boii wrote: Have bought a punch bag and hung in garage any ideas for work outs I done a bit last night arms are hanging off me going to run tonight I think.
Penn wrote: » You can be addicted to sugar without eating actual spoonfuls of sugar though, in the same way you can be addicted to alcohol and prefer drinking wine or beer without necking a bottle of Absinthe.
silverharp wrote: » didn't we have a thread recently about someone with a coke cola "addiction"/difficult to shake habit ?
Macy0161 wrote: » It is in no way proven, or is there scientific consensus, that sugar is addictive.
SortingYouOut wrote: » Sugar may not be addictive, but the feeling of enjoyment from the release of serotonin it causes can be very mentally addictive.
Are you addicted to the bliss point? That’s the deadly ratio of sugar and fat junk food firms cynically exploit to get us hooked, and after two years’ investigation HUGH FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL says we must fight back — before it’s too late • Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall investigates the obesity crisis in a new BBC1 series • The NHS spends £1.5m an hour on treating diabetes and £10 billion a year • Researchers believe half the population will be obese by 2050 • Hugh questions why the traffic light system isn't mandatory on all food products • He received over 100,000 signatures on a letter to speak to the Health Secretary • He shared the importance of not relying on the food industry to fix the crisis By Hugh Fearnley-whittingstall For The Daily Mail Published: 22:12, 9 January 2019 | Updated: 00:46, 10 January 2019 The news that British children are guzzling 22st of sugar by the age of ten has been a shocking start to the New Year. It’s no wonder Britain has the worst obesity rate in Western Europe. Twenty-two stones is the equivalent of almost 140 bags of sugar, and if you see a picture of all those bags piled up together, it’s hard not to feel alarmed — and a little queasy. Every ten minutes a child in the UK is having one of their excessively sweet teeth removed. But premature dentistry is just the start of the problem. Our toddlers’ taste for sugary treats means that one in three kids are now overweight by the time they leave primary school. The personal cost for these youngsters is immense. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (pictured) spent two years investigating the UK's obesity problem for his latest BBC1 series, Britain’s Fat Fight — The Battle Continues By the age of 12, they are already on a fast track to obesity, and have an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes and heart disease as a result. Couple this with the fact that amputations related to type 2 diabetes are the fastest growing surgical procedures in the NHS (about one limb is being amputated every hour), and that the Government spends more on treating overweight and obesity-related diseases than it does on the police and the fire services combined, you can see why I am convinced that the obesity problem in the UK is more than just a crisis. It is now a national emergency. What has caused this catastrophe, and what we can do about it, are two of the big questions I’ve been grappling with while making my latest BBC1 series, Britain’s Fat Fight. Fifty years ago, most people tended to eat three square meals a day and no snacks. Sweets and cakes were just an occasional treat, and only two per cent of the population was obese. I don’t remember any particularly over-weight children in my primary school class in the seventies. Then the idea of eating between meals was jumped upon by marketing executives as a clever way to boost sales of a whole bunch of products, old and new — many of them high in sugar, salt, and fat. They created a snack market that barely existed before. And they have been astonishingly successful — today, the UK’s snack market is worth around £18 billion a year. Combine this with the arrival of fast food on the High Street in the mid Eighties, plus a new takeaway culture which promises to deliver fast food right to your front door, and it is easy to see how the average adult now eats 200-300 more calories than they need every day. Everyone I met while making Britain’s Fat Fight seemed to want to eat more healthily, but there was always something that thwarted their attempts to do so. For some it’s biscuits, for others it’s crisps. Some lose all self-control when confronted with a pizza. For me, it’s the Toffee Crisp. There’s something about the way the chocolate melts on the tongue and combines with the chew of the toffee and the pop of the rice which means I have been known to eat three of them back-to-back . . . What is it about these snacks that gives them such a vice-like grip over us? I went looking for the answer — and what I discovered is perhaps even more alarming than the amount of sugar that our children are eating.A few years ago, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute in Florida found that when rats were given unlimited access to pure sugar, they ate a lot of it, but didn’t get fat because they adjusted their consumption of other nutrients to make up for it. And when the rats were given as much fatty foods as they wanted, they put on a bit of weight, but not too much, as they generally chose to eat less. But when the rats were fed a combination of sugar and fat, the researchers found that they ate the sweet fatty food continuously and exclusively, becoming sedentary and gaining masses of weight. It was as if they lost their ability to say no. Then last year, Dana Small, the director of Yale University’s Modern Diet and Physiology Research Centre, used brain scanners to prove that very much the same thing happens in humans. When we eat foods high in both sugar and fats, the neural circuits in our brain’s reward centres light up like Christmas trees. And starchy carbs such as wheat and potatoes can be combined with fat to produce similar effects. Which are the foods high in both sugar and fat that create these intense cravings? The answer, of course, is all our favourites. Doughnuts. Chips and crisps. Biscuits. Pizzas. Burgers. Chocolate bars . . . my old friend the Toffee Crisp. Interestingly, this almost intoxicating combination of high levels of sugar and fat doesn’t generally occur in nature. There are lots of natural sugars in fruits and roots, and there is plenty of fat in nuts and fish. But very rarely do you find them together in a single natural food source. It’s almost as if Mother Nature didn’t want us to eat them together. In fact, one of the very few places where you find sugars and fats together naturally is in breast milk. Which, of course, is the only food humans are designed to continue eating until we are so full we physically can’t take any more.What these researchers have demonstrated was that we are genetically pre-disposed to find these sugary fatty foods irresistible . . . but, of course, the food companies hardly needed to be told. For years now, their own scientists have been developing new foods with the perfect combination of sugar and fat they know will trigger our greed the most. They’ve even got a name for this holy grail of snack design: they call it the bliss point. When you discover all of this, it is hard to see how anyone can blame individuals for the obesity crisis. Yes, we are all ultimately responsible for what we put in our mouths.
Hisham Ziauddeen, a psychiatrist at the University of Cambridge, said that the rodent studies had been misunderstood by the authors, and added that a review of the matter he co-authored last year did not support the idea that sugar was addictive to humans. “The rodent studies show that you only get addiction-like behaviours if you restrict the animals to having [sugar] for two hours every day. If you allow them to have it whenever they want it – which is really how we consume it – they don’t show these addiction-like behaviours,” he said “What this means is that it is the combination of that particular kind of intermittent access and sugar that produces those behaviours. Further you get the same kind of effect if you use saccharin … so it seems to be about sweet taste rather than sugar.” Ziauddeen added that it was not surprising that even rats hooked on cocaine might prefer sugar, pointing out that many animals would naturally look for sweet things, not cocaine. Maggie Westwater, a co-author of the study with Ziauddeen, said that the anxious behaviour sometimes shown by rodents after eating sugar was far from a clear sign of addiction. “Since such ‘withdrawal’ often occurs in the context of extended fasting, we cannot say if the behaviours were precipitated by previous sugar consumption or by hunger,” she said, adding that unlike for cocaine, rodents would not seek sugar if it was paired with an unpleasant event, like an electric shock The authors of the latest study also point to parallels between the effect of cocaine and sugar on the brain, pointing out that both interact with the same reward system. But Ziauddeen said that was not surprising. “The reality is that quite simply the brain’s rewards system and the circuits that control eating behaviour are the same ones that respond to drugs of abuse,” he said. But, he added, unlike sugar “drugs of abuse seem to hijack those systems and turn off their normal controls.” Tom Sanders, emeritus professor of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London said that it was “absurd to suggest that sugar is addictive like hard drugs.” “While it is true that a liking for sweet things can be habit-forming it is not addictive like opiates or cocaine,” said Sanders. “Individuals do not get withdrawal symptoms when they cut sugar intake.”
Macy0161 wrote: » https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/25/is-sugar-really-as-addictive-as-cocaine-scientists-row-over-effect-on-body-and-brain So I stand by no proof or scientific consensus.
Snipp wrote: » Take in less calories than you are burning. Lift weights a few times per week. Do this for 6 months and you wont be fat. End of story.
tony1980 wrote: » Don’t eat between meals, snacks, etc and if you can manage just two meals a day instead of 3 to allow a bit of Intermittent Fasting and for those meals, eat you veg or salad and meats and you’ll have no worries. Weight will fall off! Cut Sugar and Bad Carbs out, just some willpower and allow yourself a treat on a Sat or something so it’s sustainable.
Penn wrote: » It's generally a longer story than that, and your post is overly simplistic. It's easy to say what you did, but harder for people to follow as your advice doesn't take into consideration tips on how to stay motivated, how to ensure you're getting proper nutrition from those fewer calories, tips on how to avoid common pitfalls such as parties/holidays/illness which can knock people off their rhythm, how best to target exercise for weight loss, and also sharing our individual experiences so others can learn from them or see they're going through the same and how to cope with it etc. Maybe you should have some consideration for the people who use this forum for more in-depth help, guidance and discussions than "Eat less, move more. End of story."
Snipp wrote: » Literally everything you mentioned is covered by what I said - take in less calories than your body is burning and you will loose weight. There is no need for external motivation if someone actually follows that advice. Do it for a few weeks and the sheer changes in ones body composition is motivation enough. My recommendation for weight training is also extensively researched.
Penn wrote: » That works for some, but not for all, and isn't the only way to lose weight. I've lost over 6 stone in 8 months by pretty much doing the opposite. I have a healthy snack between meals (because it helps reduce hunger, helps me control portion sizes better and is allowed for in my calorie limits), eat three meals and two snacks per day (no intermittent fasting), and generally don't allow myself a weekly treat (but rather simply ensure the snacks/meals I'm eating are things I like, so no treat necessary). Hence why, as per my post above, the forum involves a lot more than just eat less, move more. There are many ways to lose weight. Not all ways will suit all people, and not everyone would find it easy to stick to particular ways due to their own habits, schedules etc.
