I usually fast or almost fast for about 16 hours a day. The small meals thing sounds like a good idea in theory, but in practice I don’t like to eat a small amount of something. I like to eat a lot. So I usually just skip breakfast and lunch and eat dinner and a snack or two whenever I feel hungry again in the evening. About every other day I’ll eat something before dinner or drink a beverage with calories before dinner. On a practical level I’ve realized I consume fewer calories overall if I just fast. I’m not sure what my body fat percentage is but it’s pretty low for a woman. BMI=21ish
It’s other people in my life that need to walk and diet - some are at risk of diabetes and heart disease. My situation is nowhere near as serious. I’m in the normal weight range. I’d just prefer to have a flat stomach. Maybe one day I’ll try harder to get one.
Weight (and BMI) is overrated as a metric for individuals. (And boy have we beat that horse into the ground on the boards.) For health risk I’ll take the “overweight” person who is exercising and eating healthily over the “normal BMI” person who isn’t even walking much and eats crap every time.
You think that because you are normal BMI you are not at risk of diabetes, or a host of other health complications, from poor exercise and nutrition choices? Wrong.
It can, and does, for some people. Others will have a hard time sticking to it. Any diet that controls the amount of calories going in will have good results, and Atkins *applied correctly *can do that.
Like I said a few times apparently what matters is your waist measurement… e.g. a thin person with a very big belly where the fat is around the organs rather than just under the skin (I’ve seen them before) can be worse than an overweight woman with a large proportion of the weight on their hips and thighs (and bottom and breasts)… if she has a smaller waist measurement…
…“More often than not, cardiovascular fitness is a far more important predictor of mortality risk than just knowing what you weigh,”…
There’s at least one study I’ve read where the subjects were given anabolic steroids, and they did lose belly fat mass. Anabolic steroids mimic the effects of having higher testosterone levels, and women do seem to prefer men with less belly fat, so it isn’t entirely inconceivable that the fat located there somehow responds to hormone levels.
Of course, in the United States, you cannot go to the doctor and get such drugs prescribed for this purpose. The bizarre reality is that it’s totally legal to go to a plastic surgeon and get your belly carved on, maybe even silicon abs installed, or silicon pectorals, etc. The government won’t stand in the way of that, even though the risks (infection, death…) are higher than for anaboic steroids (anger, cardiac issues, acne…)
BMI is a very crude tool for measuring someone’s fitness. It’s useless for athletes, for example.
If you’re worried about someone who is quite a bit overweight, none of what is being discussed in this thread really matters. She needs to eat less and exercise more - everything else is noise.
“Humans didn’t evolve with food available at all times” was an argument from article #1. Hunter gatherers had great variability in caloric inputs as compared to modern first world citizens. I don’t know how much modern diets throw things off, but found this notion interesting.
Other thread highlights from the first page are below–not necessarily directed to intermittent fasting, but approaches to healthy eating in general.
Calories in vs. calories out is basic science. But different people may absorb calories differently:
Hari Seldon agrees, and adds a story about how he lost weight, partly through a prescription drug (anti-diabetic) that inhibits glucose release.
A quote from WebMD about burning visceral fat (under your skin; around your organs and belly) vs. superficial fat.
In other words, you can’t spot-reduce fat on your stomach, butt, or wherever, but with exercise, you might be able to burn slightly more internal fat.
And finally, a very specific approach to weight loss as it worked for one poster. This approach is so narrow that I doubt anyone will want to adopt it exactly. But it works for SerafinaPekala, and many different (specific) things may work better for you too. Eating healthy is definitely not a “one size fits all” approach.
Lastly, a cool article on “mindful eating”, but this is paywalled so most of you probably can’t view it.
As said multiple times in this thread, exercise is not nearly as effective for weight loss as controlling diet. I have found exercise essential to maintaining my weight loss, and it certainly contributes to burning calories and being fit, but you can easily defeat all the exercise in the world with a few bad eating habits.
those who don’t want to exercise but want want do lose fat for them I have a meal chart. by following this chart you can lose 1.5-2 kg per weak…
1st day= just vegetables
2nd day= just fruits
3rd day= just vegetables and fruits
4th day= just on cup rice and 5 tomatoes
5th day= 3 glass milk and 8 Bananas
6th day= vegetables one cup rice
7th day= vegetables and fruits
every day you must drink water more than 10 glass… you can have tea or coffee (except milk and sugar)
I read somewhere that you have to climb 20 flights of stairs to burn the equivalent of one piece of bread. Seems a helluva lot easier to skip that piece of bread to start with. Or, alternatively, skip the bread and climb those stairs. I think many people tend to overestimate the number of calories burned during exercise.
First time, we stuck to it religiously. I lost about a pound a day, going from 235 to 208 fairly fast. Then I slowly crept back up when I was back to my old habits.
I tried a second time, couldn’t stick to it as well, did not work anywhere near as well. Either the diet is EXTREMELY sensitive to carb levels, or it works less well as you keep repeating it and your body gets used to it. Even when I was doing it properly, I never got the 1lb/day going again.
