Nitty gritty

Why is it that when you talk about weight loss, everyone is full of advice? It’s not the advice that’s annoying nearly as much as the commands. There is a difference between friendly, supportive advice (something from either experience or education) and trying to rain on someone else’s parade, trying to look smart, or just telling someone that they are doing it wrong (sometimes based on rumors or things you heard from your friend’s sister’s herbalist).

1. Fats – “It’s not just about cutting calories, you know. You also have to cut fat.” Well, if you are cutting calories, won’t you automatically cut fats? When you give up certain foods or choose between certain foods, can’t you see that counting fat might be less important? We now choose leaner meats and skip a lot of the junk food. Sometimes that’s the perfect thing because when we do treat ourselves to a high fat food, we realize it doesn’t taste as good as we thought it did.

Clearly we are becoming accustomed to less fat because if we eat something fatty at a dinner party, it will sit quite heavy for a while. Maybe we are still eating too much fat. Maybe not. Either way, there is no question that it’s already been cut.

2. Carbs – Even those of us with just a passing interest in cars found ourselves wondering why people on diets were suddenly obsessed with carburetors for a few days before we figured it out, right? I don’t care what you say; CARBS are NOT EVIL. Your body gets its energy from carbs and without energy, how the hell are you supposed to exercise? When you eat more carbs than your body uses, however, it will turn to fat. Granted it needs to be in balance like anything else and in general, we (humans) often eat more than we need. Low carb diets work, but what about balance? For me, it’s simply a matter of it being too strict. I can’t stick with it forever. I don’t miss potatoes, rice, or noodles. I can live without bread, cookies, chocolate. The thing is, I want sauce from time to time and I would cry if I couldn’t eat more fruit than one tiny strawberry a day. While fruit has calories so you still have to limit it, when I tried the low carb diet I found if I ate one carb over, I gained weight. I do find that if I spend too many of my daily calories on high-carbohydrate foods, it slows down my weight loss.

It’s my verdict that if you want a diet you can stick to, eat a few carbs. Just don’t create a diet of carbs or you won’t lose much. Eat something with carbohydrates before you go out for exercise, but avoid it at dinner.

3. Fiber – I find the last word on fiber to be non-existent. I’ve heard all sorts of stories on why fibers are good and why you need to watch the fiber numbers in your diet. The benefit I see requires getting VERY real. When you diet, your digestive system goes crazy. The end result? Troubles in the bathroom. Fiber will help to regulate that so eat your fiber. Additionally, high fiber foods do tend to make you feel full faster and longer just because they take longer to chew and digest. Veggies are free foods that are usually high fiber that make great filler foods. Suggestions on how to work these in will come later.

4. Multivitamins – It happens to be true that most people don’t actually need supplements, but if you are dieting, there is a good chance your body is getting shorted something, somewhere. Still, even at a lower calorie level, it’s possible you still don’t need them. He didn’t seem to need them, but I kept having strange feelings of general “unwell”ness until I started taking iron and Vitamin B complex supplements. Deficiencies in those areas have long been a problem for me which is the main reason I constantly discount vegetarian diets for myself. I now take a Women’s vitamin supplement. Despite hearing that your body doesn’t use vitamins, the truth is that if your body has what it needs and can’t use it, it will dispose of it in your urine so it’s harmless. Meanwhile, if your body is short of something, multivitamins can fill in the blank.

Don’t trust the guy at the store who is trying to sell you his overpriced product. Don’t trust the webpage that is paid for by the supplement you are researching. Do consider finding one of some kind or another especially if you just don’t “feel” right or if you’re quite sure you have a deficiency. If you are a woman of child bearing years, please consider making sure you get enough iron and B-vitamins from somewhere.

5. Water – drink lots of it. The general consensus is 8 servings at 8 oz. per serving. Personally, I can’t remember to do 8 things a day, let alone keep track of 8 glasses of water. Instead I carry around a large 32 oz cup which I fill in the morning and try to make sure I fill again by afternoon. That’s 64 oz a day which is the recommendation. Sometimes when I feel like I want a snack or something crunchy, a couple large gulps from my cup helps subside the craving.

6. Exercise - The "right" way is to do at least 3 days of strength training and 3 days of cardio a week, according to the majority of people who think they have the last word on weight loss. We've done a lot of walking (cardio) and similar things and I have no problem with strength training, per se, but again we are just focusing on the one thing because it's something we can do. We don't have weights or a lot of equipment. Besides, when you build a lot of muscle with a modicum of weight loss, you find yourself not losing much, if anything at all. How discouraging is that? It's been a motivator to see the pounds flee so we prefer this method.

Still, I have started doing certain muscle building routines just because the skin is a bit saggy and I am hoping that building muscle will give me something to sit on seeing as how my rear feels so freakin' bony all the time (and I still have ample!)

Basically, while I agree that all of these things are important, I want to make it clear that it is only calories we are counting. I think you should keep the other information in mind, but counting calories trickles down into the other areas. This is what works for us. If you find something else that works for you, kudos!

Please stop making it so complicated! If it’s complicated, either one of two things will happen. The person will become so discouraged, they will quit OR the person will become one of those people who can only talk about weight, diets, fiber, calories, etc and if they are like, they will become so bored with themselves that they will quit. If they are the latter and they don’t quit, they will just be boring and who wants to hang out with a boring person? Stop boring me and let’s talk about something else other than what I’m doing wrong, mmkay, pumpkin?