Weight loss: Am I doing something wrong?

[Hicks12]

Personally I found the atkins diet to be brilliant, easy to do and lost a couple of stones in a few months but unfortunately couldnt stick to it (had some other things to deal with), people say it isnt healthy but i felt much better doing it.

Like what most have said, its probably you building up muscle so you wont be losing weight fast but just keep at it as you will be healthier for it ! Maybe just try and reduce the portions down a touch and instead do longer but less intense workouts, try walking around the block every so often (if you tend to sit down for awhile). Hopefully you will get your weight down but its just patience now .

My doctor has said I must reduce my BMI but she wont ever take into account anything else, its just step on scales and calculate BMI... ignorance is annoying, ive been trying to lose weight again for a few months now and have lost about 4KG . I go gym atleast 5 days a week for an hour or 2 on cross trainers / rowing machines / bikes, then I play squash every other day (varies but normally is that or every day) for an hour or hour 30minutes.

I know for myself its just my diet, havent been strict on myself and have had about 5 birthday parties including my own , lots of food and alcohol hasnt helped but basically just stick at it and try to make SMALL changes here and there, if you find yourself not hungry then just reduce that meal a touch, dont rush to change things as its a slow process.

[kalniel]

And as if on cue, this appears at the BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18985141

[Butcher]

- Drink 8 glasses of water in a day. Research proves that this washes out fat and people lost 5kg in 6 months by just drinking watr like this
- Consider doing belly-dancing at home. No shame in it. Lots of people prefer this as an excercise to lose belly fat
- Buy a few ruby red grapefruits ( 3 for £1 in LIDL ) and drink a glass of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice everyday.

I'll echo what kalniel said here, got the paper that said that water helps reduce fat?

Also, belly dancing won't help lose fat from your belly (although it is good exercise). You can't spot reduce fat - where fat is stored is genetic, all you can do is lose fat and hope.

Why grapefruits? Is there something specific to drinking grapefruit juice? I'd imagine a carton of squeeze (not from concentrate) juice would work out more cost effective also.

[Agent]

Drink 8 glasses of water in a day

The other guys have already mentioned about the fat bit, so I'll pick up on this bit alone. The 8 glasses of water is one of the oldest health myths going.

[OilSheikh]

Have you got a link to the research paper that says this? Sounds completely wrong.

The other guys have already mentioned about the fat bit, so I'll pick up on this bit alone. The 8 glasses of water is one of the oldest health myths going.

I read in the papers guys. Should have cut out as a clipping! Observations were carried out between people who had drunk 8 glasses/day and people who hadnt.

A glass of water is approx. 250ml. So, 2 X glasses = an Evian bottle of water
8 glasses of water / day also helps keep your urine white. Yes, your urine should be EDIT:Colourless

[Zak33]

no.. your urine should be colourless.

White urine is .... not right.

grapefruit is NO USE if you have hayfever.... Grapefruit totally reduces your ability to resist pollen. In fact most hayfever tablets state not to eat any grapefruit products at all.. no juice.. not even any sweets with the flavouring.

[ZaO]

Who has colourless urine though, really!? I have an awesome diet and probably drink to much water in most peoples eyes. Mine isn't...

[SteveL]

I started doing the Global Corporate Challenge 65 days ago. It involves doing as many steps per day as you can. I also stopped eating bacon and sausage for breakfast, substituting a bowl or porridge oats (not porridge, yuck!) with cold skimmed milk and that was about it for changes to my diet. My average step count per day is around 16000 (that's a 3 mile lunchtime walk, and then cycling/walking/swimming in the evening) and in the time that I've been doing this, I've lost 15lbs and I'm on the last hole in my belt!

Get out there and get walking, you don't need to hit the gym to lose weight. Worked for me, and quite a few other people at work who're doing the GCC as well.

Steve

[kalniel]

I read in the papers guys. Should have cut out as a clipping! Observations were carried out between people who had drunk 8 glasses/day and people who hadnt.

The closest I could find are these papers:

Lappalainen R, Mennen L, van Weert L, Mykkänen H. Drinking water with a meal: a simple method of coping with feelings of hunger, satiety and desire to eat. Eur J Clin Nutr 1993;47:815–819.

Van Walleghen EL, Orr JS, Gentile CL, Davy BM. Pre-meal water consumption reduces meal energy intake in older but not younger subjects. Obesity (Silver Spring) 2007;15:93–99.

Davy BM, Dennis EA, Dengo AL, Wilson KL, Davy KP. Water consumption reduces energy intake at a breakfast meal in obese older adults. J Am Diet Assoc 2008;108:1236–1239.

Elizabeth A. Dennis, Ana Laura Dengo, Dana L. Comber1, Kyle D. Flack, Jyoti Savla, Kevin P. Davy and Brenda M. Davy. Water Consumption Increases Weight Loss During a Hypocaloric Diet Intervention in Middle-aged and Older Adults. Obesity (2010) 18 2, 300–307. doi:10.1038/oby.2009.235


They find that water consumption prior to and alongside eating a meal is associated with weight loss for middle aged and elderly people (not young people), and that this is basically due to it filling you up so you don't eat as much and reduces drinking of higher calorie drinks. There is no evidence of any fat flushing out, and the authors admit that they need larger sample sizes to be sure, as well as longer term studies as they don't know whether the effect is sustained.

Reading them, I'd say it's definitely worth having 2 glasses of water before a meal as it certainly doesn't do any harm, and could be beneficial if you're trying to lose weight, but it's a rather simple mechanism and I wouldn't expect it to do anything as miraculous as flushing fat!

[Zak33]

I'd like to add something further please, to the water debate.

I don't know if there is any science to back my own findings.. but they're real findings from my body.

Water dilutes acid.. making it less corrosive.
Stomach acid has a job to do.. and when you eat, your stomach (not intestine.. your stomach, where the food is fist broken down) has to mash up your food. You chewed it, and the salivary amylase starts working on the starch first, but as soon as you swallow it, it sits in your stomach and is mixed with acid , and it does that for a fair time.. I think over 20 minutes.. before moving off to the intestine for actual absorbtion.

If you dilute the acid, with loads of water....your stomach.. well mine at least.. struggles to digest the food as well, as if you eat with only small quantity of liquids.

(We won't discuss how we know our body has digested it less well, lets go on trust..... )

It is possible, in my brain,. that your stomach doesn't break down so much of the food and therefore your intestine doesn't absorb as much of it.

Sounds good in theory I guess... for losing weight. But it's DIRE for absorbing minerals and vitamins and stuff that are integrated into the food.

I know it's old fashioned.. but somethings that are old are because humans find they work through hundreds/thousands of years... but eating a grapefruit or other citric fruit as a starter must help with digestion as it is acidic anyway. Might not help you lose weight, but it helps you to get the most from your food.

I've side tracked from losing weight.. I'm sorry. I just don't like the idea of water sloshing about with stomach acid.

[kalniel]

Good thought exercise Zak, but water doesn't actually dilute acid all that much. To alter stomach acid by 1pH you'd need something like 5 litres, and stomach acid naturally varies in range by more than this anyway - not to mention it's capable of compensating if it needs to

[Zak33]

blimey.. one gallon? I don't think anyone can drink that much and still eat dinner.

but it does beg the question... why if I drink a pint of water with dinner. is it obvious to me the next day that I drank a pint of water with my dinner?

[scaryjim]

Just putting this into measures I can understand (old-fashioned guy that I am ), you're currently 13st 5lb at 5'10" tall. This means, unless you've got a really odd body shape, that you're by no means obese; in fact you're probably not particularly lardy.

As others have said, BMI is an appalling indicator of anything, because it relies solely on weight and height, and the two are far from directly proportional. Your current weight and height could easily be perfectly healthy if you're heavily built or have well-developed muscle-mass. So don't think you need to lose weight just to meet some arbitrary measure - only lose weight if you aren't happy with your body as it is.

IMO, one of the best things you can do diet-wise if you're serious about weight-loss is go vegan. It will remove the vast majority of saturated fats from your diet automatically, will almost certainly increase your soya intake which assists with Cholesterol balance and is good for general health, and it'll also make you think a bit more about what you're eating. Forget all the "fluffy bunny" arguments for not eating animal products - the bottom line is that animal products are generally unhealthy

[kalniel]

but it does beg the question... why if I drink a pint of water with dinner. is it obvious to me the next day that I drank a pint of water with my dinner?

Dunno. A pint is a moderately sizeable volume of extra stuff sitting in your stomach that your meal (which in most cases also largely consists of water) has to squeeze around (hence why it helps you eat less).. but it shouldn't have any effect on your gut fauna (the usual cause of 'next day' effects). Do other drinks cause the same? (most drinks are nearly all water as well, of course). Maybe your tap water has too many bugs in for you

Forget all the "fluffy bunny" arguments for not eating animal products - the bottom line is that animal products are generally unhealthy

It's bean sprouts that'll kill you

(Actually the only case of food poisoning I can remember suffering from was split-peas - many pulses it seems require quite a bit of care to avoid problems)

[Agent]

I read in the papers guys. Should have cut out as a clipping! Observations were carried out between people who had drunk 8 glasses/day and people who hadnt.

A glass of water is approx. 250ml. So, 2 X glasses = an Evian bottle of water
8 glasses of water / day also helps keep your urine white. Yes, your urine should be white.

It doesn't really matter what a 'glass' of water is defined at. The linked article shows that there is *no* evidence for the 8 glasses claim.

Drink when you're thirsty. Your body will do the rest

[scaryjim]

... many pulses it seems require quite a bit of care to avoid problems ...

Rice is worse. Seriously. Much worse. Which always surprises people when I tell them. Pulses should be fine as long as you make sure they're brought back up to boiling once a day, AFAIK, but then again pretty much anything foodish can harbour nasties...