Perhaps I should put this in the nutrition forum as a reply to Brad's "Amazing Breakthrough" about the socalled no-fad diet. But I won't.
The background is that I've always had weight issues, since puberty anyway. I've been on every diet imaginable, including on in 1950 that operated on the principle that celery takes more calories to digest than it offers, so you eat celery by the ton and end up with a negative calorie intake. (Said diet also used vinegar and mineral oil as a salad dressing for celery!)
Seven years ago I had a real weight problem. For several years at 5'8" I was over 200 pounds, also severely out of shape. A real change in life style has kept me in the gym 3x weekly and my weight more undercontrol, except for the seasonal deal. It started in the fall every year, with Halloween and the leftover candy. Then my wife started making her 30 kinds of Xmas cookies, which I sampled profusely. Then T'giving, Xmas, some birthdays--so in mid January I usually had 10 new pounds to shed and had to put aside some jeans with 34' waists. Usually Atkins would get everything back to some reasonable weight by May 1.
But not this year. I just couldn't stay on Atkins. I switched to a more traditional low-fat diet and it didn't work, either. Finally, in mid-April, I changed tactics. The only "diet trick" I resorted to was "eat nothing white except cauliflower and egg whites." Otherwise, I just ate what I usually ate, except smaller portions. Half a piece of 100% rye toast instead of a piece. One boiled egg instead of 2, and 1 piece of bacon instead of 2.
It didn't seem for a while that this was working either, mainly because I was carrying about 70% of the excess weight in my abdomen. Then I noticed some fairly striking increase in thigh, arm, and shoulder definition. Finally some gut receded. When I went to the gym yesterday everyone--well, two people--said, looks good, you''ve lost weight. Today I stored those pairs of jeans with 38" waists; 34" now fits.
I didn't count calories, although obviously what I was doing was reducing their number in my daily foraging. But I didn't have that feeling of being on a diet, and now that I'm almost where I want to be I also don't have that old feeling of, whew, that's over, now I can indulge myself. I simply changed some habits very slightly and it worked for me, although maybe not for everyone.
Oh yes, I also left food on my plate, thus thumbing my nose at my dear departed mother and grandmothers, who were charter members of the clean plate brigade. They also measured their self worth in the second helpings their progeny ate--and brought guilt to the dining table with admonitions to remember the starving childen of Wherever.
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"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument." William Gibbs McAdoo. US Vice-President under Woodrow Wilson.
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