Rule of Life #153............

Never, NEVER tell a group of people your weakness or what "buttons" to push you don't like. Now they will push your tummy button just because! Life can be so cruel............

I'm 250# and built like a brick sh**house! Go ahead and touch my tummy...........It could be your last.......

You can use the lines:

I have the body of a god - Buddah

or I'm in shape... Round is a shape..

or I've finally conquered anorexia

I was underweight all my life until my 40s then my stomach didn't bounce back after eating as much as I used to. I notice that I'm not as active as I used to be also. I do caution against the diets as well. Eat properly when you are hungry. If you are full then stop eating. Whole wheat products are more filling than plain (like spaghetti, and breads) so you don't have to eat a lot to be full. Snack on fruits instead of ice Cream. Stay away from products with
processed sugars too. That is a tough one I know.

If these don't work you can always go back to the come-backs at the top.

Set a goal for yourself. Be reasonable about it. Write it down. Read it every day. It will work.

Good luck. I'll keep my fingers on the keyboard.

- Brian

I did Atkins in the early 80's. It worked great I was about 190 and got to 170 pretty easy until I missed the bread and vegetables. I hate to say this, but check with maybe your doctor. I heard that Atkins is hard on some folks kidneys.

Some where you will have to learn to eat 3 or 4oz lean steaks and forget the 16oz steaks. That doesn't work for your health. eat everything low fat.Throw the french fries away and eat baked potatoes. Use low fat butter etc. If you use sugar quit and use just a bit of sweetner. Recent tests say that artificial sweetner does not cause cancer. It seems they were giving the rats a 55 gallon drum of sweetner a week. Ha! Ha!

Like my sister-in-law says, "life's a drag, LIVE IT."

I second the opinions of those of you who defend that a healthier lifestyle, with a balanced diet, containing all kinds of food in the right proportions, and with regular exercise, is the (only) way to go. With some discipline and a good choice of meals it is possible to loose weight at a slow but healthy, safe and continuous pace. I'm telling you this from my own experience. All the various quick weight loss diets work by creating partial starvation, including the popular Dr Atkins diet.

Well, in Dr Atkins diet, the assumption is that saturated fats are good and the carbohydrates should be banned because they make you fat, so the solution is to eliminate the carbohydrates from the diet. How does this diet work? Well, normally the body burns glucose and uses body fat as a long-term energy reserve. By eliminating carbohydrates from the diet, and since sugars are also forbiden, the body has nothing to convert in glucose, and quickly runs out of blood sugar. It starts then to break fat down into ketones, using them as "fuel". This process is called ketosis, and not much medical research has been done about it. However it's known that it leads to huge losses of water and that body protein (muscle) ends up being burned also, just as fat. When this ketosis state is maintained for a reasonable period of time (necessary to produce the famous amazing results), it easily induces a dangerous increase of uric acid, and some doctors call it (humourously!...) "the passport to heart attack". This high-protein diet (based on saturated fat red meat) is likely to produce kidney and liver problems, as well as increase the possibilities of osteoporosis.

As you know I'm no doctor, so you shouldn't believe me. Make your own research, read, listen to the specialists' opinions and make up wour mind. BTW, did you know that Dr Atkins developed his own heart problems and that they were kept secret until he had a heart attack in a public place?...

All diets that produce spectacular results are very likely to be unhealthy or even dangerous, and I believe they should be avoided except in very exceptional cases and for very short periods of time. They also have the big disadvantage of not teaching us anything about habits changes, that I believe are the key of a sustained good health. So, Dan, if you just have a little tummy and aren't overweight and exercise regularly, you shouldn't really worry!

Here's a couple of links of recommendations I found useful:
http://www.nal.usda.gov:8001/py/pmap.htm http://www.oldwayspt.org/pyramids/pyramids.html

-- José.

.... Last year I almost got through 1/2 of the NYC marathon
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then my cable went out !

I have been seeing a doctor on a regular basis. It was the doctor who suggested trying the Atkins diet. The diet is not as extreme as one would suppose. One starts out minimizing the grams of carbs, but over time, that minimum amount grows. It can increase quite a bit and people can still lose weight. But the essense of the diet is similar to the advise given here -- eat basic foods (meat, fish, eggs, cheeses, vegetables and avoid foods that are high in carbohydrates) and get a half hour or more of exercise in every day. Atkins was not a researcher; he was a medical doctor with 30+ years of experience with patients who successfully lost weight on a low-carb diet -- and didn't immediately gain it back. But, of course, that was because they had changed their life style as has been suggested in this thread. I might also mention that I am a diabetic and my glucose readings that had risen past the 200's and then into the 300's over the past year, dropped down to the 110-120 range within a few days of starting Atkins. That was a pleasant, and welcome, change. I have not been hungry at all, and I do, indeed, have more energy, which makes doing that exercise easier. As long as I'm feeling good, I plan to stick with it awhile; nothing else I've tried has been as successful. I'll see the doctor again in another couple of months and with the usual blood tests, I'll see whether all those "bad" readings have improved or not.

I wasn't going to "defend" the Atkins diet, but Joe explained it quite well. It is very similar to Sugarbusters, but more extreme, particularly in the beginning.
I feel better already after only a couple of weeks.
DonM

Joe and Don,

I sincerely hope that the diet you're following will make you feel better and bring good changes to your lives IN THE LONG TERM. It's a good thing that you are beeing followed by a doctor, 'cause he is supposed to take into account your particular body condition. But I personally wouldn't listen to just one opinion. Dr. Atkins plan is very controversial among the medical community, and when I have the choice of a wiser more natural path, I won't certainly follow the risky ones.

Here are just some examples of the reasons for disagreement: http://info.getbulky.com/weightloss/00013.html http://content.health.msn.com/content/pages/7/3220_136#Say

Some comments about Joe's post: there is no mistery in your much better looking glucose readings: you're drastically cutting down the "natural" sources of glucose, and obtaining your energy from body ketones. One of the ketosis state well known consequences is the reduction of appetite, so I'm not surprised you mention this. My point here is: all this can be achieved in a smooth and SAFE way. Beeing a diabetic, if you carefully moderate the amount of foods that provide glucose to your body (carbohydrates) and take some natural (or synthetic) appetite reducer you'll get the same result over a more extended period of time at NO risk and virtually at NO cost. You don't need starvation and certainly don't need to buy Atkins pills. I doubt that you have more energy now than before; the energy now is coming from other sources than the usual glucose derived from carbohydrates. Actually, in the first weeks of the diet, the huge weight loss is mainly a water weight loss and the carbohydrates stored in your muscles. Later on, this weight loss will be produced by fat (stored in your body) burning. So there is a tendency for muscle mass reduction and in fact this diet is highly incompatible with strong physical activity. What I guess you might be experiencing is a sensation of being lighter than ever, due to violent weight loss, and this of course makes light exercise easier, masking a real muscle weakening.

Joe: it's also curious to see what you call "basic foods" (like meat, fish, eggs, cheeses). I don't know what's your criteria for "basic", but from the point of view of early man's eating pattern, the basic foods are fruits, vegetable, grains, all sources of carbohydrates (and fiber). And Atkins forbids a "normal intake" of vegetables and fruits, whose benefits for human health are solidly recognized by experts.

In conclusion: I believe we live a major part of our lives maintaining wrong and unbalanced nutrition habits, and end up paying for a risky cure, with uncertain consequences in the long term, when we could follow an easy, and $ free route: maintaining frugal eating habits and exercising is much less expensive, and we save big money not having to buy Atkins pills. But I also came to know the (actually MY) reasons for an overweight tendency : our increasingly sendentary lifestyle and the massive pressure of consumption habits. Excessive food consumption and later on... pill consumption. I find it ironic. I can also tell you, from my own experience, that periods of neglecting healthy eating habits are related with excessive work and sometimes some kind of frustration. When my work doesn't go well or I have too much of it, I eat more and in an unbalanced way.

Sorry if I sound too patternalist, but I gave the subject a serious though and am just sharing my thoughts. Sincerely: good luck and please share with us some pictures of your new look!

-- José.

[This message has been edited by matias (edited 05-13-2003).]

Well said Jose! But I doubt anyone on those fad diets will listen. Oh well, we need something that will help control the population explosion and keep the medical profession and funeral parlors in business. Even those fad diets help the economy in one way or another. I, too, am a diabetic, but I eat right and exercise and have an A1C of 6.1 and body fat of 18%. Not bad for a 56 year old considering the average body fat for a male my age is 24%. No fad diets for me.

Stay Healthy,
Peter

I joined Weight Watchers
http://www.weightwatchers.com

back in August 2001, and it worked (and continues) to work for me. Lost 28 lbs in 4-1/2 months, and proud to claim that I've maintained my (more/less) optimal weight (for my height & frame) for over a year and 5 months now. In addition to regular aerobic exercise (treadmill/biking) and eating a lot healthier (more veggies & fruit, complex carbs vs refined, lean meat and reduced fat, especially the trans fat), I've discovered that overly large portion sizes were a big contributing factor to my earlier weight gain. Weight Watchers is based on assigning points to all food eaten per day, and the Weight Watchers 'points' system makes it so easy to keep track of this. The cool thing about Weight Watchers is that you are even allowed to bank (save up) points which then allows you to every so often (but not too often) indulge in a rich dessert or even 'pig out' on an entire meal.

The fact is, once you reach your 30's, your body metabolism slows down and your body just won't burn off those extra calories anymore like it did when you were younger and could eat all you want of anything, and still remain slim. The key to both healthy & permanent weight loss success is 'lifestyle change' and Weight Watchers provides the tools to achieve this. Having attained Weight Watchers lifetime membership status myself, I highly recommend the Weight Watchers system as a healthy 'non fad' diet approach to achieving and permanently maintaining optimal weight & health as well.

Scott