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I keep wanting to make some sort of diet-myths quiz. It would have questions like:

In the recent study that revealed Atkins dieters lost more weight in one year than people on other types of diets, about how many pounds, on average, did the Atkins dieters lose?

[  ] 6
[x] 10
[  ] 15
[  ] 25
[  ] 50

Immediately followed by:

If you reduced your daily caloric intake by just 100 calories and kept your same level of activity, in one year you could lose about how many pounds?

[  ] 6
[x] 10
[  ] 15
[  ] 25
[  ] 50

The answers (highlight the choices to see) should reveal something about diets, but it would take way too much effort to come up with more.

ETA: And the question I'd thought of yesterday, because I didn't know the answer until I ran across an article on it: how many calories of a baby's diet should come from fat?

[  ] 10-20%
[  ] 20-40%
[x] 30-50%
[  ] 40-60%
[  ] 50-70%

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Question #2 does not surprise me. I think my activity level is about the same as a year ago, but the calorie intake is up (more carbs and fat, alas!), hence the weight gain.

I've also heard that the Atkins dieters gain it back faster.

I worked out the BMR (basal metabolic rate) for me at my original weight, and then worked out how many calories I was eating on an average day, and the answer came out to be just about the same - it was, basically, the extra calories from a Coke a few times a week that pushed me up over time.

My most recent weight gain started shortly after I hurt my back badly, so my activity level, such as it was, dropped. Which makes sense. :)

I don't remember if I've heard that or not, but I know that most diets fail because they're designed to be short-term things, and once you go off them and resume normal eating habits, the weight goes right back up to where it was, or higher. You have to change your eating and/or activity habits permanently to maintain it.

Oh, I just remembered another question I was thinking of yesterday, about babies' nutrition. I'll go post it.

How do you work out the BMR?

There's a standard formula you can use, and if you drop 'BMR calculator' into Google, there's lots of pages with automatic calculating thingys you can use. :D I used this one (http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/). Obviously, it doesn't take into account any special things that individuals have, and is a guideline rather than a hard-and-fast thing, but it seems to get somewhere in the ballpark.

I lost about fourteen pounds in two weeks on Atkin's. You know, because the high fat diet kept triggering IBS attacks. Not the best way to lose weight. XD

See! Obviously, it works!

That's awesome. When people tell me they're going on Atkins, I usually go into a long lecture about the biochemistry of it, and how it's like starving yourself.....

....but this is MUCH better to tell them, because it gives them a better outcome besides just "this way is heathier for you!" Thanks!

Everyone I know who's tried Atkins or a high-protein, low-carb has fallen off it fairly quickly. XD Except for one person, but she has a gastric bypass and I expect it works for her mostly because she needs to eat foods that pack a higher caloric punch since her stomach is so small. But I don't know her that well, and certainly not well enough to ask detailed questions about her diet. :)

I usually just point out that when diabetics go into ketosis, they get sent to the hospital, and that's the state that Atkins deliberately tries to put you in.

i haven't followed what diet you're on, since i tend to avoid such stuff, but i actually have some personal experience with atkins. :)

to be fair, atkins only puts you in ketosis for the induction phase, and IMO it's mostly done to give you a quick success at the start, because that's motivating for a lot of people. even though i am not a diet person (i hate the emphasis placed on it in north america) i noticed how well that worked for me -- after a few days of fuzziness i was feeling more energetic, and it got me moving more right away. so i wouldn't diss this per se (usual warnings re checking with doctor, etc); two weeks of ketosis won't kill most of us. in comparison i was dragging along on the low-fat diet, always without energy, always hungry. atkins allowed me to feel like exercising more, so it actually started a healthier behaviour cycle.

i ate according to atkins for a timed experiment with a friend, and it worked much, much better for us than the low-fat regimen we also tried. when i say "worked much better" i mean that i wasn't constantly hungry, and i felt more energetic -- i don't actually give a shit about weight loss (i did lose weight as well, and rapidly). but carbs make me tired, and atkins showed me just how much energy i had when i wasn't stuffing myself with them. that was good information about myself. atkins was also right about my cholesterol improving -- it did (i had blood tests done before starting and just before ending the experiment).

aside from it being an experiment, i didn't expect i would actually be able to stay on atkins because ~~i am not an idiot~~ i love carbs too much. but now i know i'm somewhat of a carb addict, that i self-medicate with carbs, and have to watch that i don't overdose. as a result i now eat more healthily than before -- i went from atkins to doing research on the glycemic index, and have integrated that into my eating habits. which doesn't feel like a diet (i think all diets are doomed to failure). oh, and atkins got me away from refined sugars and caffeine, which is a good thing.

but it's basically quackery in its main claims. it is still all about calories -- he says you don't have to count, and i think that's a real boon for people on the diet; calorie counting sucks. but because it was an experiment we kept detailed food diaries and it turned out we were eating a lot fewer calories even though we didn't purposely limit our intake. ergo atkins doesn't work by burning more calories, it works by cutting massive amounts of them and by controlling appetite. and the other bit of how it finagles that past induction is the fat -- fat is a flavour carrier, and food simply feels more satisfying when it tastes good. a low-fat meal leaves me feeling hungry, while an atkins meal with the same calories leaves me feeling full. there is no magic.

its long-term maintenance phase looks a heck of a lot more like a normal food regimen than its initial phases, and i think that's when most people will just fall off that wagon, because the weight loss will be miniscule as compared to the induction. and unless one can use the initial boost to leverage oneself into more healthy eating, period, it'll all come back. just like with every other diet i've seen. just about everyone i know who's gone on a fad diet, low-fat or low-carb, has fallen off it, and regained the weight and then some.

Thanks for the input - you lasted longer the pretty much anyone else I know on it. :D

i haven't followed what diet you're on, since i tend to avoid such stuff,

Not on a diet. :) I'm mostly just changing the way I eat and increasing my activity - eating less and exercising more. At the moment I'm calorie-counting because that way I know exactly how much I'm eating - it's way to easy to start underestimating the amount of food I'm eating, plus I'm a stats nut and like to make a spreadsheet with charts showing all sorts of things. Over time, I expect I'll do less and less of that, and hopefully manage to keep a good idea of what a normal-sized portion is for me, and how much food I should be eating to maintain whatever weight I end up at.

10, and 10.

20-40?

I've got '6' marked for the Atkins question, but now that I think about it, I think I'm mixing it up with the recent article that says there's a genetic component to obesity, and that people with the genetic tendency to be obese average 6 pounds heavier than those without. I shall go look up teh answers again. XD

I believe that the recent study revealed that the folks on Atkins took off a little more and kept it off longer than the folks on South Beach, the Zone, etc. Which is not to say that they were any of them *terrifically* successful, and the folks running the study took it as an opportunity to point out how poorly most people actually comply with any given diet: everyone in the study cheated, it was just that fewer of the ones on Atkins cheated.

Yeah, I was mixing it up with that other study, and the answer's closer to 10. Have fixed it. :)

I lost 15 lbs in about 3 months by... eating a little less, and a bit healthier. Well, okay, more than a little less: 1300 cal/day, down from probably 2,000. But since my maintenance intake was 1800-1900, that definitely made a difference. Being a little hungry most of the time for about 12 weeks was well worth the payoff.

I've lost almost 30 pounds (er, ok, 27, but 'almost 30' sounds so much better) since January through reducing from approximately 2000/day with hardly any exercise to a net intake ... *thinks* ... it ranges from 1000-1600/day, but probably ends up averaging 1400/1450ish. That's post-exercise; if I don't factor in the exercise calories, it's closer to a 1600/1650 average.

I'm usually not hungry, but that's something I pay close attention to because one of my migraine triggers is hunger, and on the days when I do have a migraine, I've given myself permission not to stick to a limited number of calories. I figure one or two days of not watching what I eat every 3 or 4 weeks won't hurt me in the long run. Ironically, I still tend to end up within my lower-calorie range on those days, but more from migraine-induced apathy than anything else.

I seem to have leveled out because I'm not actively trying to *lose* any more, but I'm also upping my exercise (3 days of running, 2 days of weights per week now), so I'm hoping to continue losing inches while I build muscle. That's the plan, anyway.

And congratulations: 30 lbs (or even 27: it could be 30 on a good day) is significant! I love the way it's self-reinforcing, because it feels so good to be lighter, and that inspired me to stay on it, although the holidays were a bit dicey. *g*

Thank you! It's both exciting and frustrating - my last spurt of weight gain started after I hurt my back in 2003, and I haven't got back to the size I was then, which is frustrating, but it also feels good to be able to get back into jeans I retired a year ago and have them be slightly loose on me. I've got a shirt I bought right before I hurt my back hanging on my bedroom door, so it's my next short-term goal. :D (The goal after that is a leather jacket that I bought around the same time which never quite buttoned.)

I'm glad I started taking my measurements in February, because the latest 5 pounds were excruciatingly slow to go, but weekly measuring showed that I was still slowly losing inches at the same rate, and I take it to mean I'm putting on muscle. Yay. Also, I turned up the resistance on my stationary bike, and it's getting easier for me, so something good is happening there, too. I'll probably be taking the resistance up again in a couple of weeks.

I've promised myself not to obsess over my calories on holidays, but I never spend more than one day with the extended family, so one days' splurge isn't bad. It's more to tweak the noses of relatives who spend the day talking about diets and watching their intake. :D

I've actually heard that when you're on a diet upping your calorie intake on occasion helps prevent your metabolism from getting used to the smaller number of calories and slowing down to compensate. Can't remember where I heard that though so I can't provide proof that this is correct >_<;

There's anecdotal evidence of that over on the calorieking.com forums - when someone posts complaining about a plateau, there's always people who post saying they upped it a bit and lost weight. So I suspect you're right - from poking about the Net on the subject of plateaus, what seems to mostly work is some sort of change, in any direction: up, down, calories, exercise, changing type of calories or exercise, etc.

I've lost 39 pounds since last July - mostly by being aware of portion size, drinking enough water, and walking my ass off. I've been worried since the big sprain two weeks ago as I've now missed oh, about 40 miles of walking but I've managed to not gain any so hopeully I'l be able to lose some more when I can get back to walking.

If you ever need motivation - when the weight is coming of really slowly - go to the grocery store and find a 25 (or 29!) pound bag of potatoes or onions or (three ten pound bags of sugar) and lug it around for a few minutes! You will be AMAZED at how far you've come

Congratulations! :D And that's a good idea - I'll have to try it sometime. XD

Oh believe me, I got the baby nutrition question right. *g*

This kid eats so much that I've been splitting the work with a bottle of formula from day one, but Chuckles wouldn't touch a bottle, so for her it *all* came from me. There were days when if you had handed me a bucket of lard and a spoon, I probably would have dug right in. SO MUCH FAT required, and your body is not at all shy about telling you that you need it, NOW.

Wow. XD

I ran across the numbers in a blog post on Junkfood Science talking about a trend among people now to restrict their babies' fat intake because of the media scare about obesity.

But when I was double-checking that stat, it ended up being hard to find any numbers - lots of articles kept saying that babies needed fat and they shouldn't be restricted until age 2 or so, but nobody was saying how much. Aargh! I finally found a quote that said what the American Association of Pediatrics recommended, but I can't be surprised that people are doing funky things to their kids' nutrition, especially if they have no idea how to get the actual numbers.

Yeah, it's crazy-- though we did get lots of warnings to make sure baby got whole milk, etc. It's important for brain development-- so we're going to have a whole generation of anorexic dumb kids, I swear.

I would not be at all surprised.

I played with the BMR thing and the equation said I should be getting around 2055 calories per day. Doesn't that sound a little high? I don't do sports, and I am taller, but not that tall.

Not really. Standard adult calorie needs are around 2000 cal/day. Individuals may be more or less depending on quirks of their metabolism, activity, size, fat vs. muscle composition*, and age. Note, also, that that is to maintain you at your current weight. Do it again with the weight you want to be and see how much it drops.

Did you go on to the Harris-Benedict equation (http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/harris-benedict-equation/) that tells you how many calories you should be eating in order to reach the BMR results? (Not all the calories you eat get metabolized, so you should eat a little bit more than the BMR.)

To maintain myself at my current weight (and height, and age), my BMR is 1847.82 (2864 to maintain if I engage in moderate sports 3-5 times a week). Using the H-B equation, if I were sedentary, like I was before I started this exercise program, I get 2217 cal/day to maintain at this weight.

OTOH, if I drop in the weight I want to be, my BMR is 1490.25 and the calorie level from the H-B equation is 1788.3 if I'm sedentary (2309 if I engage in moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days a week). Big difference there. :)

And note also that this is all post-exercise - these are all net calories.

* I forgot the exact measurement, but some amount of fat will burn 2 calories/hour while at rest, and the same amount of muscle will burn 6 calories/hour at rest. (A pound? A kilogram? I don't remember.) The calculator assumes you have an average amount of muscle and fat - if you have more fat than average, your BMR will be lower; if you have more muscle than average, your BMR will be higher.

Ah okay. I dropped in the weight I wish to be eventually and got a little less than 1800 calories per day. I equated everything as sedentary as my workouts are not exactly hard.

* ...quirks of their metabolism, activity, size, fat vs. muscle composition

I meant "frame size" - the size of your bones.

my BMR is 1847.82 (2864 to maintain if I engage in moderate sports 3-5 times a week).

I cut-and-pasted the parenthetical remark in the wrong position - it should be after the 2217 cal/day remark. :)

Speaking of frame size, I can never tell what mine is. It seems like the lower half of my body is large boned while the upper half is smaller. I don't have particularly huge wrists or anything. It makes shopping for clothes a pain, as even if I go into the plus sized stores, things will fall off of my shoulders.

We must be related! :D I'm the classic pear shape - big bottom, smaller top. :) I know I've got fairly narrow shoulders, just because any bra that fits me around the chest has straps that fall off my shoulders.

According to the online calculators here (http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/fsz) and here (http://www.am-i-fat.com/body_frame_size.html) (the second one tells you how to measure your elbow width), I've got a large frame.

* And to finish my thought ... I've got a large frame, which surprised me, because my wrists and ankles always seemed delicate to me. But it would explain why the one time I got my body fat tested - caliper test at a health fair about 15 years ago - it told me that my ideal weight was 130, which is at the extreme upper end of the weight range for my height.

I'm not coordinated enough to do the elbow measurement, but I tried the wrist and am getting 5.5" (maybe less) and a "small" frame.

If you hadn't just done a ton of research into your family I would say it was possible, but my family is all from Slovakia (or around there) and Canada.

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atkins

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good work!

Re: good work!

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