The problem with comparing diets is that they depend on humans for success. There really are two parts to understanding a diet: The scientific part and the human part. It’s one thing to do controlled studies to find out how different diets compare for weight loss during the experiment. But it’s a whole different thing to know which diets people will continue with to manage their weight over their lifetime. People can stick with a lot of strange eating habits when they have the motivation of a new diet, but eventually a lot of them will drift back to their old habits over time.
From my own anecdotal experience, low-carb (Atkins) works incredibly well in the short term. The friends I know who tried it lost a lot of weight very quickly. But none of them stayed on Atkins. They all eventually went back to a typical diet and gained it back. So even if low-carb is the best way to lose weight, that may not matter if people don’t continue to eat low-carb.
One problem with just calorie counting for calorie reduction is that most people eat foods that are nutritionally barren. If you eat something that provides 10% of your daily calories but only 3% of your daily nutrition, cutting calories means you are also cutting nutrition. Some foods have no nutrition (soda), and other foods have added sugar and fat to improve the taste and increase sales. If someone has a crappy diet, it might be that they are eating so much trying to get their necessary nutrition.
This kind of behavior is self-defeating. If you keep chasing the high of delicious food, you’ll likely end up gaining the weight back. This is this hard part of keeping the weight off. You have to find the resolve to eat properly and not give into those irresistible urges.
I’ve kind of read this thread now, including some of the links.
I like reading, and I read quickly, and my comprehension is higher than average. This took time, and was not easy.
And my conclusion after reading is “a bunch of people said a bunch of stuff about food”.
Unfortunately, it hardly matters if any of it is right or wrong, because the terminology and the concepts are abstruse and unclear and there’s little agreement.
If you want to lose weight, eat less. I’m convinced that a huge percentage of diet discussions are nothing but people trying to make that somehow be not true.
If it’s so hard to eat less, then decide to not lose weight after all.
I really think it boils down to Michael Pollan’s advice–“Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” People get weirded out when they look around my kitchen, because according to most people, I don’t have food, I have ingredients in spite of my fully stocked pantry and full fridge and freezer. I prefer only buying stuff that’s minimally processed, raw veg, raw meats and minimal dairy. Except cheese, I dig the cheese.
High carb foods overwhelmingly tend to be highly processed foods and those are shit from a nutritional standpoint. When I elected to get off the carbs in response to a rising blood glucose level I decided I wouldn’t be overly concerned about calories because the calorie level I was used to kept me at a stable weight, so worrying about calories was not an issue–what I needed was to stop eating all the highly processed high carb/high sugar foods that were sending my insulin response into a Very Bad Place. So I basically don’t count any carbs that come to me in the form of unprocessed fruit and veg, aside from avoiding some obvious traps like dried fruit and mango and the like. I eat a shitload of salads, which is easy because I don’t have to worry about the fat content of the dressings and I can pile the avocado on.
When I do feel like cheating a little bit, I go for high fiber whole grain bread or a few corn tortillas to make cheese tacos. Getting the sugar out of my diet along with over processed high carb snacks was, basically, all I needed to do to bring my blood glucose down and as a side benefit I’ve been steadily dropping weight as well. Since this is a lifestyle change rather than a short term goal to simply lose weight, I foresee no real barrier to maintaining good health and an appropriate weight. All I have to do is avoid crap food and it’s pretty nice that the crap food announces itself with a really high carb number. Seriously, how many high carb foods can anyone name that are also chock full of nutrition? Not a lot, mostly fruit with a naturally high sugar content–the rest is basically chips and cake.
Second best advice I’ve gotten from a dietician: “don’t cut out anything. If you cut out favorites, when you have them you’ll splurge; instead of a square of chocolate you’ll eat a bar. Don’t cut out, regulate.”
Best advice: “eat when you’re hungry, but only until you’re not hungry any more, and choose low-density food over high-density. A pear is about as big as a slice of cake but the pear is water with some fiber and vitamins; any cake is a caloric bomb.”
Mine sure does vary: if I give myself permission to have a square of the darkest chocolate I can find, I’ll have zero to none. If I don’t, every trip to the supermarket those cups of chocolate mousse with whipped cream will be whispering my name. And my mother, well, there was this time I went to get some chocolate from the pantry… “Mom? Where’s the chocolate?” “No chocolate in this house! I’ve cut it out!”
It took me less than 15 minutes to find 12 bars hidden around the house. I’m the one who used to handle hiding the Christmas gifts, I know all the hidey holes!
Best part about going low carb is you can fake chocolate very easily–cacao powder, coconut oil, erythritol (or whatever non caloric sweetener you prefer) and a splash of vanilla, along with maybe a half cup of peanut butter or ground pistachios or sugar free Torani syrup if you like mint or caramel flavor or some instant coffee or whatever. Mix that all together, spread it on a parchment lined pan and stick it in the fridge then cut it into little bite size chunks. You totally think it’s chocolate but it’s low carb, does not impact blood sugar and the fat is very satiating. It’s very good for you and if you pig out, no real problem. You’re getting good fats, the cacao powder has all kinds of antioxidants in it and overall it’s an extremely good way to fool your cravings into thinking you’re giving in to them.
On a low-carb, high fat diet, I’m not hungry and certainly not hungry for sweets. I do aim for at least 2 cups of lower glycemic vegetables earlier in the day, and if I’m going to eat fruit, it’s at breakfast. On a plant-based diet my FBS goes too high and I’m hungry.
I’m not saying it, the registered dietician I talked to said it, sort of, but not exactly. She said healthy people needed to eat a bare minimum of 56g protein/day, but that didn’t include people trying to gain muscle. She actually said a lot more than that, but I didn’t want a TL;DR post.
Anyway, a lot of the protein you eat if you are healthy and not recovering from an injury or illness, goes to your organs, and those are pretty much the same size no matter whether you weigh 90lbs of 250lbs. That’s why organs can be transplanted between vastly different sized adults.
I’m not pulling that out of the air. I’m telling you what several people with degrees in nutrition told me.
I don’t think I said “higher than 85 g,” I think I said upwards of 120, which is totally unnecessary. Albeit, 86+g could harm someone with an existing kidney condition, and I think I did say that.
We don’t look like we have a lot of carbs in our kitchen either, because we don’t have pre-fab breads, boxes of cereal (the boychik sometimes has one), or things like chips. We do have bags of flour (bread, pastry, WW, rye, rice), but people don’t look at those and think “carbs” for some reason. We also have lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, another thing people don’t look at and think “carbs,” but they are. And we have dried beans and lentils and a pressure cooker. Beans are high in protein, but they are also high in carbs. People seem to know that when they see them in a can, but not when they see them in a bag.
I’m skeptical of the advice “Eat only when you are hungry.”
If you eat like we do, food prep takes some time, so you have to start before you are hungry, otherwise your blood sugar is going to be awfully low by the time the meal is ready. I suspect that the advice to eat only when you are hungry can result in over-reliance on convenience foods-- stuff you can grab and go with as soon as you are hungry, or processed stuff that takes just minutes to prepare.
My brother has a weight problem, but he manages it by sticking to three meals a day. He never snacks. He eats as much as he wants at meals, but he never eats between meals, other than a cup of coffee with Splenda. He even allows himself dessert, but he eats it only after his last meal of the day, and only immediately after, when he’s pretty full, so he eats a very small portion. He was a really chubby kid, and decided to get his weight under control when he was about 12, so he saw the doctor, who hesitated to put a child on a diet, and that was his advice-- no snacks. He could eat something low-fat, high protein if he needed it right before bed, like a small serving of sugar-free, low-fat or fat-free yogurt, but nothing other than that, except that he could drink diet drinks, or something like Kool-Aid made with an artificial sweetener-- nothing else between meals.
He stuck to it, and for three years, didn’t gain any more weight, but grew seven inches, and got really slim. Then he grew another five inches in one year, and the doctor put him on a controlled schedule of healthy snacks, like fruits, or a slice of bread with peanut butter. When he stopped growing, he started getting a little chubby again, so he cut the snacks out, and lost some weight.
He’s in his forties now, and is heavier than he was in his 20s, but he’s not unhealthy. He looks fine. He still sticks to the three meals a day (occasionally eating a few treats on holidays), and it works well for him.
Whether or not you got it from someone else, you were saying it.
What are you talking about? You picked one thing protein does (goes to your organs) and then claim since organs are about the same size in different adults, protein needs are the same. You failed to take into account other things protein does.
I doubt that several people with degrees in nutrition all gave you the same one size fits all magic number for protein.
You said:
“People who are trying to build muscle want to consume a little extra protein, but don’t really need anything higher than about 85g, and that’s getting into the “high protein” area already.”
Do you still think that’s true? Would more cites help?
Before that you said:
“A healthy adult needs a minimum of about 55-60g protein a day.”
So, a minimum of 60 g, and a max at 85 g. That’s some narrow window for people of all sizes to hit. It’s also too much incorrect info for this forum.
Do you have a cite for that 86+ number? You also said a high protein diet can harm kidneys of someone without a kidney condition. Cite? Let me guess, you were just hypothesizing or it’s what someone told you.