What do y'all think of this 7-day diet?

Cafe Society
21

[QUOTE=Viridiana]

I agree that exercise must be a big factor in real weight loss. After spending over a year being depressed about my weight, I finally started exercising regularly in addition to eating less and well (regularly meaning really, even if I’m wiped out from work, as opposed to little stints of 2 times a week followed by 3 weeks of laziness) and I fit into clothes that were too tight even when I weighed less. I kind of just started (week 3), but I’m feeling pretty good so far. I’m hoping to be back in my dusty old size 1 jeans (I’m very short) in four months or so, if I keep it up.
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underlining mine. How does this work? I lost 12 pounds last August/September when I decided to really scale back carbs and ramp up exercise (going from “sometimes” to every day), and have kept them off. But I still weigh ~15 pounds more than when I last wore clothes in this size - some of the same clothes, even, so it’s not the size creep with clothing marketing. And with the exception of my hip measurement being 1.5" more than 5 years ago, I’m the same “size” as I was 15-20 pounds ago; not to mention that in women’s magazines the women with the same measurements as me are considerably lighter. Does muscle gained from exercise really weigh that much more?

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From someone who lost 70 pounds in one year…(310 -> 240)

You gotta do both, diet and exercise for the best results. I call it, “Yeti’s Slash & Burn Diet”, but you can call it, “A Balanced Approach to Weight Loss”.

How did I lose so much? Easy. Well, easier than I thought:

Cut 500 calories a day on food intake = 3500c/week = 1 pound slashed.
Burn 700 calories/day for 5 days exercising = 3500c/week = 1 pound burned.

I got rid of regular sodas and cut back on seconds at the table. Cut back on excessive sugary stuff, but do not totally eliminate them!
Used the elliptical machine (great for bad knees) to burn the calories quickly…I got up to 20c/minute = 35 minute workout. Lately though, I have been doing 1150c in 55m so I can skip a couple of days. Sometimes, I do weight training, but you don’t burn fat as fast, but you do build muscle. Elliptical machines are great for aerobic workouts = fat burn, but not as much muscle building, but my muscle tone in my legs are pretty impressive compared to a year ago. Now I am evening out my upper body with weight training. I want to be a Y-Rex, not a T-Rex!

Lately though, I have been on a plateau for a couple of months, because of my busy schedule and not exercising enough, but have replaced it with hours of yardwork. I am now just under 240, with my target weight at 210.

I feel f’n great!

As for fad diets…they are just tactics used to sell magazines, and they will delay your inevitable discovery that the truth is that you have to cut calories and exercise for any real appreciable results. Lifestyle changes trump fad diets every time. Mark my words. The SDMB has a weight-loss club over in MSPIMS.

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Viridiana, thank you so much for sharing your experience. From what you said, it seems like your metabolism did drop a bit from this diet. It makes sense that some of the weight you lose would be from muscle mass, especially if you aren’t exercising regularly.

I’m hoping that maybe I can counter this by working out 4-5 days a week. I really like working out, and I actually had been doing it regularly for a couple months until July rolled around and I began a frantic search for a new apartment, and then I found one, and then I was moving, and now that it’s all over my old gym is no longer convenient and I’m out of the habit of going. When I get paid next week, I will be joining the gym that’s right across the street from my new apartment. I’m joining with my girlfriend (who’s also wanting to try the diet with me), and a coworker of mine already goes there, which is a great motivation for me to go, so I really think I can count on myself to permanently incorporate it into my life. I think that if I work out during and after the diet, my muscle mass will increase and counteract some of that metabolism drop the diet causes.

Since you tried the diet, I’m curious: was there a noticeable difference in the way you looked or fit into your clothes after the diet the first time? Also, how did you feel while you were on the diet, in general? The reason I ask is I suspect that the “feelings of well-being” this diet advertises are really lightheadedness and weakness from the drastic reduction in caloric intake.

Thanks to everyone else for your input. You all make some really good points and I’m definitely taking them into consideration.

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[QUOTE=tdn]
You’re true about this, but I should mention that a heaping plate of whole-grain pasta is still a heaping plate of calories. In my weight loss efforts, the hardest adjustment for me was cutting down on carbs. I felt hungry all the time. But I adjusted to it over time.
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You have to eat the stuff that metabolizes slowly, and unfortunately that’s usually in vegetables like (like broccoli and such). I never liked the taste of whole grain pasta, so I don’t eat it. I find that by cutting the pasta servings down in size, and adding more vegetables, you can fill up pretty easily.

You have to make sure you eat regular meals, though. (Regular meaning often.) If you eat a skimpy breakfast and a light lunch, you’re going to be starving by dinner time and that huge serving of pasta is going to be irresistible!

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[QUOTE=John Mace]

But here’s the thing: what do you do after that first week? You probably don’t want to live on the diet the rest of your life, and if you go back to your normal eating habits afterwards, you’ll just gain the weight back.

If you switch your diet to be low in processed carbs (breads, pastas, refined rice) and high “good” carbs, protein and fat, you’ll do better than this diet and have a healthier lifestyle. Oh, and make sure you exercise, too, even if it’s just walking a few miles several times a week.
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Bingo!

Over the last two months I’ve shed 14 pounds, by overhauling my eating habits and upping my exercise, mostly through simple little things like parking at the far end of the supermarket parking lot, taking other opportunities to walk farther than usual, stuff that’s easy to do but adds up. I should add that I do barn chores (mucking stalls, carrying hay bales and water buckets, etc.) every day, so it’s not like I was sedentary before; I’ve merely increased the amount of energy expended above what my body’s accustomed to.

The dietary changes are equally simple, tasty and satisfying, and sustainable in that I can happily go on eating this way for the rest of my life. Adjust what you eat and how much of it you take in, and whaddaya know: the blubber melts away, at a sensible, healthy pace.

Any diet and/or exercise plan that claims you’ll drop some dramatic amount of weight in a short time is a setup for failure, in my opinion.

True true true!

Right again. Over time you can retrain your body to want less at each meal, to feel satisfied with smaller amounts of food, but you have to help it by keeping it from being racked with hunger pangs; otherwise you’ll break down and stuff yourself.

Try this for lunch: A packet of flavored (maple and brown sugar, e.g.) instant oatmeal with a spoonful of dry nonfat milk and a couple of spoonfuls of flaxseed meal or wheat germ. When it’s cooked, stir in a tablespoonful or two of peanut butter or almond butter or cashew butter. It tastes good, it’s not that high in calories, and you’ll feel full for several hours.

Another tip: Don’t deny yourself treats, but make them work for you. Love Dunkin’ Donuts’ Coffee Coolattas? I do! Only the one I treat myself to every afternoon is made with skim milk and no whipped cream, which cuts the calories down to 170, and I can nurse it for an hour. Beats the hell out of snarfing down a slice of cake, say, and then craving something else sweet in half an hour.

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Okay, this is totally the Cabbage Soup Diet without the cabbage in the soup.

Which now that I think about it, might be a good thing. When I did the cabbage soup diet back in the day, I was bloated and gassy the entire time from all the fucking vegetables in the soup. It should have been called the Fart Soup Diet.

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BTW, Scientific American always does their September issue on one topic, and guess what it is this time: Nutrition and Diet.

Here’s the first article: Eating Made Simple.

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I lost a lot of weight, over 100 pounds on the Atkins diet and have kept it off for close to six years. Ketosis is an appetite suppressant, and hunger has never been a problem. Don’t let anyone tell you that Atkins is a high protein diet, it’s a high fat diet. I have around 65% of my calories come from fat. My cholesterol is astonishingly low, under 170 mg/dl, and my HDL/LDL ratio is excellent. On the other hand, my low fat, Dean Ornish following brother is on both coumadin and lipitor following his heart attack, which he had when he was 5 years younger than I am right now.

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[QUOTE=nevermore]

Since you tried the diet, I’m curious: was there a noticeable difference in the way you looked or fit into your clothes after the diet the first time? Also, how did you feel while you were on the diet, in general? The reason I ask is I suspect that the “feelings of well-being” this diet advertises are really lightheadedness and weakness from the drastic reduction in caloric intake.

Thanks to everyone else for your input. You all make some really good points and I’m definitely taking them into consideration.
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I think it could work under certain circumstances, but keep in mind that any significant improvement in your diet is likely to lose a bunch of weight initially, so you may not need it. If you insist, though, the exercise will be good :slight_smile: it just needs to continue and you definitely want to have a clear eating plan for afterwards…try to get a professional to look at your physical situation in particular and advise (rather than give you general advice).
I remember that sure, I thought I looked better than when I was heavier, but I didn’t look as good as before I’d gained the weight in the first place. There more exercise would probably have helped. And I remember generally feeling bad. Kind of anxious and tired and dull, really scared that the scale would suddenly shoot back up, but I kept putting a good nervous face on it (and I was somewhat giddy since the numbers on the scale were going down), and ended up feeing really weird and fake for that. But it wasn’t unbearable. Doing it with someone really close like your girlfriend should help.
I wouldn’t, because the thought of that soup is gross to me now, but if I had to do it again, I probably would just eat the suggested foods normally and not pay attention to the “stuff yourself” thing (I think that’s why I got sick of it so fast) and the minimum number of bananas thing. I figure that kind of thing can’t be the same for everyone.
Just make sure to chop the veggies by hand! And I added a lot of curry powder the first time, it was pretty good that way.
The gym is cool, I feel it’s only a pod people factory if one perceives it that way. Once I got past the boredom (yay Nintendo DS) it’s fun and kind of relaxing :slight_smile:

Oh, and elfkin477, I’m probably not the person to explain the exact physiology of it, but sure, it makes sense, both because muscle tissue weighs more and because the toning makes a big difference, helps you sort of control where you’re losing. My office shirts fit because my arms have shrunk noticeably, but I haven’t lost my boobs yet, and those were the first to go when I was simply dieting. :smack:
Congrats on that loss!

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Any lifestyle which will let you keep pounds off will also work to take them off in the first place. You don’t need a seven-day diet to jumpstart you.

The trick is to find a lifestyle which is both healthy and enjoyable for you, so you’ll be able to stick to it. Excercise can mean thirty minutes of jumping jacks every morning, or it can mean long hikes through the woods. Or bike rides, or swimming, or whatever it is that you enjoy.

On the diet score, I can pass along the one my mom uses (I don’t know if she got it from somewhere else). She started it about ten years ago, and is currently losing about a pound a year on it (the first years were more, of course). What she does is she makes sure each day to eat at least ten servings of fruits and vegetables and three of low-fat dairy, and whatever else she wants. But she has to get those ten fruits and veggies in. Because of the flexibility, this can still accomodate things like Thanksgiving dinner occassionally, but she doesn’t have much room for unhealthy things. And her veggie servings can be any veggie she wants, which keeps the diet from getting monotonous. Whenever I’m home visiting, I eat what she eats, and it doesn’t even feel like a diet at all.

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There’s been a variety of sound diet advice in this thread already, but I figured I’d add in the following. These are quotes from the diet plan you linked to, how many of them sound rational:

“it will clean out your system of impurities”
-Meaning what? What impurities and how are they being “cleaned out”?

“This soup will not add calories.”
-Uh huh. Sure it doesn’t. Go look up the calorie content of beef broth, green beans, carrots, etc.

“The secret lies within the principle that you will burn more calories than you take in.”
-Well no duh. That is how you lose weight and I hate to break it to these guys but it’s a pretty poorly kept “secret”. Of course they don’t say a thing about exercise or activity or how to actually burn calories.

“Due to the variety of digestive systems in individuals, this diet will affect everyone differently.”
-Variety of digestive systems? What, some people have five stomachs, others have a craw, there’s those guys who spit digestive enzymes on their Magic Vegetable Soup and absorb the nutrients through their epidermis…? And the “will affect everyone differently” gives them a perfect out if it just doesn’t work.

I doubt very much that you can actually lose 10 pounds of fat in 7 days following that plan (or any other plan, realistically). As others have said, that requires burning off 35,000 calories of stored body fat in a week, so 5,000 calories per day.

If you are currently eating 5,000 calories per day (that’s a lot of food) and getting zero exercise, you would have to STOP EATING COMPLETELY to lose that kind of fat in a week, without changing activity level. This is incompatible with their plan of eating all that soup, milk, fruit, juice, baked potatoes and butter, “2-3 steaks” and so on.

You may be able to drop 10 pounds in a week, but perhaps that’s from emptying your bowels and losing a lot of water weight. Geeze, I routinely come back from a run having sweated off 5+ lbs in a few hours (over and above all the fluids I take in while running), never mind one week.

My opinion, I think that diet is pretty dodgy. Talk to your doctor, make the sensible long-term changes you were talking about (healthier foods, portion control, increased activity as appropriate for you) and aim for a reasonable weightloss goal, keeping in mind that it’s a long-term goal; you didn’t put on the extra pounds overnight, they aren’t going to come off overnight either.

1-2lbs per week is a common recommendation for a safe rate, but even 0.5lbs a week is still 26lbs per year. That’s huge. And if you can make those changes in your life and stick with them over the long term I think that you’re more likely to keep the weight off since it wasn’t a “magic fix”.

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Here is what worked for me: Low-carb/high protien. I think it really works as snacks are limited, not the “ketosis” line. Over two years, in two 8 month sessions, I lost around 30-40 pounds. The “Atkins” diet works as you are never hungry. But after a while it does get boring (whatever you do skip all the specal "low carb versions of regular high carb foods, unless you really really crave Ice cream or something) so you drop off it.

But they stayed off as I changed my eating habits afterwards to a “no gain” diet. I dumped the worst offenders (fries, chips, candy, dough-nuts, and the like) away, and my weight stayed stable. Yes, I still ate a double-cheese burger once in a while and the like; it wasn’t a “diet” is was just increasing my fiber, walking a bit more and dumping those bad foods enetirely from my diet.

However, now it is hard to get my weight to budge so I tried Alli, and I have lost 10# in 2 months; with just one “bathroom emergency”. :eek: (if you take Alli and then eat a very greasy meal, you should stick close to a bathroom.) :eek: :wink:

One final suggestion- add a lot of fiber to your diet, and drink more (non-caloric) fluids. If you hate fiber rich foods, there’s that white powder stuff that mixes invisibly with most anything.

A change from HFCS soda to Diet can help. Yes, I know you hate diet soda. Trust me, if you drink diet and ONLY diet for about a month, the HFCS soda will then taste nasty and diet will taste normal. Believe it or not.

As for that Cabbage soup diet, if I was female and needed to drop 10# in two weeks just for that special party or somthing, OK. But don’t expect it to stay off.

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I’ve done a version of this, closer to the original cabbage soup diet, in that it had cabbage in it, and I modified it by adding other low-starch, low-carb vegetables I liked, like summer squash, maitake mushrooms, mung or soybean sprouts, etc. I also used various no salt seasonings. And yes, I lost weight and felt good. But got very bored very quickly.

The main benefit of it is that it gets you eating more vegetables, which is a cornerstone of every healthy diet. There is a lot of evidence that having a cup of a broth-based (not cream) soup before meals reduces overall food intake.

soup 1

another soup cite

tao of good health

So find a broth-based vegetable soup recipe you like (and watch the sodium content and use of MSG in the broth – I prefer to make my own to avoid those issues), and incorporate it into your diet, but don’t make it the whole thing for more than a day or two.

In addition to all the good advice everyone else gave, the Tao of Good Health (link above) has some great advice on diet, feeling full, and nutrition.

Good luck!

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[QUOTE=tdn]
I take it that you had to lose weight so that you would put less stress on your knee. You lost that weight by exercising, which probably consisted of extra walking, jogging, or bouncing about. Which put increased stress on your knee. Which needed less stress, so you had to lose weight, so you excercised…

Does not compute.
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Minor hijack. . .

I used to run a lot. After surgery, I tried getting back into it, but the knee wouldn’t let me. I tried lifting weights, but that wasn’t great for weight loss (for me).

After probably about 10 months of frustration, it dawned on me to take up cycling.

I’ve probably put about 12,000 miles on a bicycle since then. I’ve never had a knee injury with cycling, and now that I’ve taken off the weight, I can run again, too. Not intensely, but enough to keep me happy.

When I couldn’t run, a wiser person would have ate better and drank less, but I just kind of entered a “fuck it spiral”. I was eating worse, and drinking more.

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[QUOTE=Valgard]
Talk to your doctor
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Always good advice, but here’s some more: Check with your local hospital to see if they have weight loss or nutrition classes. Mine offers one twice per year, and I got an employee discount. Before that, I thought I had a good handle on what healthy eating was, but that class really opened my eyes. I learned a lot from it. And at the end, I was deemed to be The Biggest Loser.

John Mace, it’s too bad you don’t like whole grain pasta. But try it again. I like Barilla’s, fortified with omega 3 (or is that 6?). No, it doesn’t have a fishy taste. And buried under a bold sauce, it’s really quite good.

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[QUOTE=Trunk]
I just kind of entered a “fuck it spiral”.
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Just by the name of it, it sounds like a fun spiral, no?

But I know exactly what you mean. Years ago I’d lost 45 pounds, then had abdominal surgery. I was told not to lift more than 5 pounds for the next 6 weeks. There went exercise. (I could have walked, I suppose, but oh hell no I couldn’t.) Fuck it, I’ll have a Twinkie. Then I met a girl. She was into food. It wasn’t long before I not only gained those 45 pounds back, but an additional 25 as well.

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[QUOTE=DrDeth]

A change from HFCS soda to Diet can help. Yes, I know you hate diet soda. Trust me, if you drink diet and ONLY diet for about a month, the HFCS soda will then taste nasty and diet will taste normal. Believe it or not.
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There’s growing evidence that diet sodas aren’t good for you either; that aspartame and its cousins can be counterproductive for weight loss. I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve ditched the diet sodas entirely and don’t miss them at all, especially since I’ve discovered there’s a better alternative: Flavored seltzer water. That’s no-sodium and zero calories, entirely unsweetened but the hint of fruit flavor is quite nice.

You have to watch out for flavored waters like Fruit2O, though – check the label and you’ll discover that a lot of them have artificial sweetener in them.

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[QUOTE=EddyTeddyFreddy]
There’s growing evidence that diet sodas aren’t good for you either; that aspartame and its cousins can be counterproductive for weight loss. I don’t know if it’s true, …
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I have doubts myself, :dubious: and they certainly can’t be worse than High Fructose Corn Syrup sodas.

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[QUOTE=DrDeth]
I have doubts myself, :dubious: and they certainly can’t be worse than High Fructose Corn Syrup sodas.
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I wouldn’t argue the point since I don’t think the case has been made yet. On the other hand, I don’t think diet sodas are any better for you.

I’ve Googled for reliable cites discussing aspartame, but after several pages of links to websites liberally besprinkled with CAPITAL LETTERS and !!!11!!!111 accusations and so forth, I gave up.

This article from 2005 on WebMD seems less hysterically inclined to extrapolate wild claims from carefully delimited research results. The article notes, for example:

One hypothesis for the link between diet sodas and weight gain is:

I take all this as reasonable grounds to stay away from the stuff, whether or not this particular hypothesis proves to be correct.