I’ve been looking into a High Protein Low Carbs + Excercise diet. What do you guys think? Anyone with experience or medical knowledge?
I know there are some issues with low density lipoprotein levels rising due to these diets, (which eventually leads to strain on the heart), but what are some other potential problems? I wonder if this type of diet could permanently screw up your metabolism.
Well, i’ve done this diet a couple times, and been told it is unhealthy. It worked for me though, so proceed at your own risk.
I limited myself to about 300-400 calories per day. Usually a single lean cuisine frozen dinner per day. for about six weeks. I’d also walk 1-2 miles per day to burn it off. I’ve done it twice, and both times lost about 40 pounds in 40 days.
There were side-effects… constant weakness, loss of sexual drive, constant misery and hunger, but it was worth it to me. it was only 40 days and i looked pretty hot at the end of it. “no pain, no gain” applies, I guess. There is no easy way to lose weight. If you’re healthy I’d recommend my method. You’ll be miserable, but it’s only 40 days.
That’s really helpfull, thanks! 
My only other question is this: did you all of the weight back very quickly, or some of it back slowly, or what? thanks a lot!
IANAD but 300-400 calories is VERY low . I don’t think any doctor would condone much less than 800, and then, only if you were severely overweight and the diet was medically supervised. Can anyone else here back me up?
FWIW - I have been on a 1300 calorie diet for the last 6 weeks and have lost 9 lbs. Slowly but surely.
I exercised a lot, ate a good bit of carbs and protein, while limiting my fat intake to less than 20 grams per day. After 6 months I looked like an underwear model. And I had plenty of energy.
Once I was satisfied with my appearance, I upped the fat to about 20% of my daily caloric intake, without losing my condition.
I’ve never heard anything under 1200 calories per day called healthy. Anyway, zuma’s diet is horrible for anyone who wants to be healthy. When you starve, you’re burning as much muscle as fat, and if you lose a lot of muscle, you’re in a bad way.
In fact, if you want to be really healthy, the best way is to completely ignore what you weigh. Plan your diet according to the food pyramid, and concentrate on building muscle and burning fat. Check out this site for lots of info.
And FWIW, some people recommend a high carb diet for building muscle. I’m not familiar enough to comment, so you’re on your own on this one.
For long term results, there is no such thing as a “diet” ie. a radical and temporary adjustment to what you eat. As soon as you stop your “diet” and return to your original eating patterns, the weight will return, and possibly with more weight.
The only way to lose weight successfully and keep it off over your lifetime is to toss the whole “diet” idea out of the window and figure out how to change the way you eat/exercise forever.
No easy way to do it, really.
Maybe you can’t call this siccess because I didn’t keep eating this way and when I stopped, I gained weight. But I did Weight Watchers a few years ago. The principles behind it are good, and I didn’t feel like I was dieting. I don’t have any good excuse for why I didn’t keep it up.
Weight Watchers is pretty much a high-fiber, reasonable-portion diet. You can eat just about everything, but it needs to be in moderation. Foods that are low in fiber and high in calories and fat have to be eaten in very small amounts. But it’s utterly reasonable, it’s easy to follow, and it doesn’t do anything that would horrify your doctor or nutritionist. If you let the lessons sink in (unlike me) it would be easy to follow for the rest of one’s life.
Well, I recently linked to an article that showed that high-protein diet causes dehydration. I disagree with it because it contradicts everything that nutritionists and various health-focused organizations state about a healthy diet. Not to mention most of what I’ve read about food.
zuma’s method sounds like a good way to screw up your health. It might work; or you could end up like my friend who only eats one meal a day and is still very very overweight.
My mother did every single diet that came down the pike except for the really stupid ones like the banana diet and the cabbage soup diet. She ended up gaining back to her original weight and then some after every single diet. Not surprising; studies show that the average american ends up 15 pounds over their original weight after dieting.
Do you want to lose weight NOW or do you want to get to a weight that you will be happy with and stay there for the rest of your life? If now, you might try zuma’s idea, lose the weight and accept that in the end you will probably be heavier than before.
Otherwise, what you need to do are to make changes that you can live with the rest of your life.
What I recommend is this.
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[li]Keep a food diary for at least one week. Note not only what you eat, but how hungry you are when you eat it. If you eat when you aren’t hungry, note why you are eating.[/li][li]After a week or so, review your diet to see where your weaknesses and bad habits are. If you eat something a lot, check up on its fat grams: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/cgi-bin/nut_s.pl . [/li][li]Pick one thing to change: substitute a lower fat item for a higher fat item that you eat a lot, eliminate a snack that is out of habit, add veggies to a meal, drink water, tea or diet sodas instead of full sugar sodas, eat something at home instead of going to a restaurant. BTW, eating right before bedtime is one really good way to put on weight, and a really easy habit to address. Pick a time limit (like two hours) and don’t eat anything for that time period before you go to bed.[/li][li]After one week, you should know if you can live with this change or not. Pick something else to change.[/li][li]At the same time, find some way to add more exercise to your routine. Be brutally honest with yourself. If you say you don’t have any time for exercising and you spend 3 hours a night watching TV, put the treadmill in the living room.[/li][/ul]
I’m with Glory. The only really effective way to lose weight and look good is modify your eating and exersise. Once you get into it, it it really becomes second nature and quite easy. And you don’t have to suffer or be hungry! The hardest part is just getting started-
I had a good diet that worked really well for me. I call it the “Water Diet”. Basically, you don’t change a whole lot of your eating habits, but you drink a lot of water. Keep a water bottle next to you at all times, and keep sipping from it. For one thing, it’ll keep you from drinking sodas and juices (extra calories, there), for another, it’ll keep you a tad “filled up” so you’ll be wanting to eat less.
'Least, that’s how it worked for me. But be warned… it takes a long time. I dropped about fifty pounds over the course of 18 months. I gained some of it back, but now it’s starting to go down again.
I was diagnosed as Pre-Diabetic. They put me on a Diabetic eating plan and I’ve lost 49 pounds. Now some of my friends are trying it.
You get the proper nutrition, which I wasn’t before. Also because your eating several smaller meals a day, I didn’t get very hungry and feel cheated.
Always check with your doctor before you start any diet. However if your obese you could be at risk for Diabetes and not know it.
I don’t know how much your planning on losing, but my diet was pretty simple. I stopped eating fast food, pizza and that kind of stuff. I still basically ate what I wanted, just cut out the hardcore junk. If I had no choice but to eat pizza or something like that, I did, but didn’t eat a ton of it, and had plain cheese, or veggies on it. Like Spoofe, I tried to drink lots of water. I was playing hockey, so that covered the exercise. I lost about 25 pounds, and I’ve gained back about 10, but thats more muscle than fat.
Weight Watchers worked very well for me, I thought the plan made sense and was not too hard to follow, and I found myself feeling better as I lost weight (not weak, which would seem to indicate that something in the diet was Terribly Wrong).
I lost about 30 pounds.
I’ve been using Slim-Fast for a while now, and it’s worked pretty well for me. I’m not following their directions precisely, but because of the nature of my work, I find it handy to carry one of the Meal Bars with me, or a can of the stuff. Then I know I won’t skip lunch or eat fattening fast food.
But I think the success I’ve experienced losing weight (both this time and the time ten years ago) is that I didn’t count calories or cut out carbs or fats or anything. I just ate less.
That’s it, plain and simple. No snacks between meals or in the evening. And smaller portions at mealtimes, with no second helpings. Moderate exercise, such as walking, also helped.
But I reasoned that since I was eating fairly balanced meals anyway, if I just stopped eating as much, I would eventually get used to smaller portions and lose the extra weight. It took longer to achieve, but it did work.
IMHO, the best places to turn to are Diets Don’t Work by Dr. Bob Schwartz, and The 7 Secrets of Slim People by Vikki Hansen and Shawn Goodman.
As I’ve worked through the exercises in these two books, it has radically altered my way of thinking about food and my relationship with it. I’ve lost 70 pounds over the last two years, so it has been coming off slowly, but it’s staying off and I know more will continue to come off.
I had these really dumb eye-opening insights over the last week, the kind of things where you go, “huh? Why didn’t that click before?” But I’ve learned that food is fuel. That’s it. It’s not good nor bad in and of itself. I’m not good or bad based on the choices I make. Food’s not a counselor, stuffing’s not going to help me deal with my emotional issues, and if I miss one meal it’s really not a big deal, because there will be another one later.
The biggest thing this is doing for me is removing the obsession with food (counting calories, counting fat grams, counting fiber grams, weighing this, measuring that, I can’t eat this, I must eat that). It lets me just be free to be myself.
I can’t recommend them highly enough.
Yes. I invented it, and called it the “iftar” diet, because it consisted largely of what Muslims use to break fast (iftar) during Ramadan, namely soup and dates. I also allowed myself lots of salad and vegetables and fruit. I avoid oil and fat, but didn’t go schizo over a bit of lemon/olive oil/garlic dressing on ready made salads.
The soup I ate also I tried to avoid cream-based soups, but wasn’t too fussy.
And occasionally I would eat a little lean protein (fish, chicken).
I think it worked because:
(a) the soup felt like a big, filling meal and was very tasty
(b) the dates tasted sticky and toffee-ish and although high in sugar don’t have all the fat of chocolate
© I was eating plenty of vegetables and stuff so had most of the nutrients I needed
(d) it was personally easy for me, because I have a horror of processed food/additives, and stodgy lardy stuff, so didn’t have to eliminate much junk food from my diet in the first place, as it wasn’t really there
I also tried to exercise more, but not that much more. I did it for about 3 weeks, and would guesstimate I lost about a quarter to half a stone.
Other advice I would give is sit and think about food. Don’t think yummy burger, think bun full of sugar and chemicals and preservatives. Meat full of offal and grease and growth hormones. Don’t think nice sweets/candy. Think bits of processed sugar painted with carcinogenic dyes. Flavours from big laboratory chemical vats not natural produce. Fat and gelatine ground down from animals hooves and body fat mixed with a nasty sugary chemically mix.
Then when you eat healthy stuff, keep thinking clean, fresh, natural when you eat it. Aqueous, fresh, vitamin-packed apple. Imagine all the pure, healthy nutrients feeding each vital organ, and the water carrying minerals to your skin, and making it glow. Think of things like honey being the essence of flowers, and natural fruit sugars from sun ripening. A lean, clean piece of protein like a piece of fish feeding your muscles.
Really, well balanced eating and understanding how weight loss, nutrition, etc works is the key.
If you read anything about eating, read the link’s info.
Once you understand that a calorie is a calorie, be it fat, protein or carbs, and you understand the rule of 3500 calories (you need a 3500 calories deficit to lose a pound of - key words - BODY FAT, then so much of the confusion will be gone)
Go and read.
I work with a fellow who has lost 70 pounds since last December. He started with limiting himself to 1000 low-fat calories per day and joined a health club and began a daily workout. After a month he went to 1500 calories per day. During this whole time he has allowed himself one day per week (usually Saturday) when he can eat whatever he wants.
This guy’s hobby was cooking. He’s into food. And he’s done well. He’s told me that on his “anything” day he now eats stuff that he just talks about all week, but not as much of it as he would have six months ago.
I only need to take off two or three pounds now & then. These ideas work for me.
To each, his own.