America is Sick

That post in January is one that I have continued to think about. In keeping with its theme, my thoughts have been mostly on what my own experiences have taught works for me.

Items #3, #4 and #5 of Ivan’s comment (at the link) are gold.

Calories in/out is the higher truth, but balancing the macro-nutrients — carbs, fat, protein — is what leads to satiety (satisfaction and fullness), which lets you accomplish the calories in/out balance without requiring so much sheer will-power.

Small changes, one at a time, not big drastic changes, also contribute to success. It’s better to slowly approach your “new normal”, because you have to stay there. If you go back to your old ways of eating… well that was what made you fat. Our mind sees “diet” as temporary. Eat only what your desired (goal) weight needs, and you naturally get there.

To quote Ivan:
— cut —
3. Calories in – calories out is the baseline. The macros (type of calories -carbs/protein/fats) is important, but not as important as total calories. Once you have CI-CO under control, you can mess around with the macro ratios. I tend to do well with higher protein and less carbs (though not low enough for Keto), but everyone is different. Figure out what works for you. If you lift weights, you likely are not taking in enough protein.

4. It’s very easy to overeat if you aren’t paying attention. Never stop weighing and measuring (almost) all your food. If you have no idea how much you actually ate, you will likely gain fat weight.

5. Merely weighing and measuring all your food is a great wake-up call, and you will initially lose fat just by doing that, even if you don’t specifically restrict calories. Just paying attention is amazing (I found I had days where I would eat 5000+ calories and have no idea, because I was not really paying attention). This is why nearly all diets work initially. Some diets are better than others, but nearly all will work for a little while, merely because you are paying attention.
— cut —

Fiber is another trick to achieve a sense of fulness — whole grains, veggies, fruits.

I prefer Citrucel over psyllium (Metamucil) and inulin (chicory root) because it produces less gas. If you’re getting daily intake of vegetables, fruit, and whole grain, you should need little to no added fiber supplements.

But Citrucel is a good tummy-filler for between meal snacking.

Aw, shucks.

I had the opposite experience. Starting with ci-co did not get me anywhere in the long run, where is starting with the macros and only occasionally tinkering with ci-co has worked.
Ditto weighing and measuring food

My guess is, regardless of how you got there, you still reduced calories overall.

My concern was more with the people who seem to argue all you have to do is cut carbs way back or do Intermittent Fasting, and then you can otherwise eat all you want otherwise. I tried that, and still had 5000+ calorie days (very easy to do if you eat a lot of fat to replace the carbs).

Yeah.

I see people arguing that it doesn’t matter what you eat, you just need to count your calories and I think this is a mistake. I know it was in my case

For thousands of years the average person walked at least 5-9 miles a day. They couldn’t go to the pantry and grab something to eat when hungry or board. They either hunted/gathered or worked all year to produce grain, which then wouldn’t be had in anywhere near the abundance (or refinement) as we have now. Sugar was even much more rare.

While it’s no doubt true that you shouldn’t just cut carbs and sugar and load up on bacon, sausage and butter, the focus on the sheer abundance of carbs and sugar is driving the problem.

My personal approach is don’t worry about fat in things, as long as I’m eating a lot of vegetables to help fill me up. People that just go full protein/fat diets are probably making a mistake, but there are a few instances where there can help, at least in the short term from what I have read.

If you are doing some exercise several times a week, the ideal guideline is, eat meat and vegetables, some nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar.

Usually we want to snack so we go overboard on fruit (just another apple, banana, orange) or a handful of nuts every 10 minutes to replace those chips or crackers. Just focus on the protein and vegetables, while minimizing starches.

I have noticed Elder Clay Christensens advice about keeping the sabbath day holy definitely applies to nutrition for me – it’s easier to keep the commandments 100% of the time than 99% of the time.

Once I make an exception, it usually escalates pretty quickly over the next few days until I need to come back from my sugar, chocolate, ice cream, french toast, pancakes, chocolate cake, soughdough loaves, and brioche and jam benders…. mmm, those are good days. But I pay for when I start exercising and return to good nutrition again.

If that’s not clear, it should read:

the focus is correct that the sheer abundance of carbs and sugar is driving the problem.

IAW – I hear ya on the 5000 carbs. It’s pretty easy to think, I’ll just eat cheese sticks whenever I’m craving a snack.

I feel in general, when you stick to the veg/meat with no starch/sugar diet you certainly get board pretty easily, but you also just run out of things to eat. I think the hope is for most people you get tired of eating that high fat cheese stick because your body at some point says, this is just too much fat. And your fridge probably only has so much bacon, etc.

So you end up just not eating as much because even though a meal with eggs, bacon, cheese, avocados is good (and higher fat/calories), you have no desire to have that for lunch after you had it for breakfast the last 2 weeks. So the prohibition on the carbs just makes snaking less of an option (even though the craving is there until you get used to not always needing to turn to sugar/bread for a quick fix.