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Haydos

'DIETING/GETTING IN SHAPE'

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Just wondering what peoples' experiences have been with dieting and exercise.

A bit before Christmas I decided I wanted to shed a bit of weight after letting myself go and having not played any sport for the past few years due to a slipped disc and a massive case of can't be arsed I sorted my diet out and started hitting the gym. After a couple of months I had got a fair bit fitter and lost a bit of weight (6"2 but over 100kg still). Anyway, my gym buddy stopped going and I lost motivation and slipped back into bad eating habits and put a bit of weight back on again.

And here we are. 2 1/2 weeks ago (after initial interest from my uni course, some research and talking to a few people online) I began following a ketogenic diet (similar to Atkins with different rules). It involves high fat/medium protein/low carbs (I've been keeping carbs below 10g a day when I can) and aims to burn fat as an energy source instead of carbohydrates.

I've been keeping calorie intake low (below 1200 ideally) and found with the main bulk of food being high fat/high protein foods such as beef, chicken, pork, cheese, eggs, my appetite has all but disappeared. A lot of the time I've only been eating a main meal at lunch time and a smaller one around 6pm and they are the only times I'm really hungry.

It's been 16/17 days since I started and I'm down 8 pounds already. I'm sure it'll slow down at some point but I've been pleasantly surprised at the results so far. Anyone else tried this or something similar?

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My Mum & Dad did this diet before where all you eat is soup and drink cranberry juice, on the fifth or sixth day you can each as much red meat as you like you can lose a stone a week! Only aloud to do it for two weeks at a time well you're not but it's not advised to do so.... I'll try and post it up of anyone wants it.

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My Mum & Dad did this diet before where all you eat is soup and drink cranberry juice, on the fifth or sixth day you can each as much red meat as you like you can lose a stone a week! Only aloud to do it for two weeks at a time well you're not but it's not advised to do so.... I'll try and post it up of anyone wants it.

Is that anything to do with losing weight for surgery? Someone was talking to me earlier about something like this where you're only allowed to do it once every 8 weeks, sounded a bit like this.

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Not really very healthy is it? Tim Ferriss has a more scientific approach in his book 'the four hour body', highly recommended. The 'Slow Carb' diet is broadly similar to Atkins but focuses much more on beans and lentils as low sugar carbs. Worth a look and it definitely works.

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Despite all these fancy diets the simple fact is you lose weight by eating less calories than you use. Whether you choose to eat pure lard or a healthy balanced diet is largely irrelevant when it comes to losing weight. The healthy balanced diet is however, much better for you.

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It's basically just an experiment. If it works, i'll stick with it, if not then i'll try something else. I'm trying it because I'm curious and have found just exercising and cutting down on crap to be less effective.

The thing is normally I eat too much and I have little self control. I know it's about calorie deficit but there are more and less efficient ways of doing things. The point I made about it reducing hunger was an important one. Carbs are addictive, they don't often fill you and personally leave me craving more. With the stuff I'm eating I find it so much easier to cut calories.

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I also did the Atkins..

Rule 1. Combine it with vigorous exercise

Rule 2. Don't drink fuzzy pop...even sugar free stuff

lol

I researched it thoroughly.. All the good carbs and the bad carbs etc etc and literally lost one and half stones in one month.

The main problem with the Atkins was the snacking between meals.. I got fed up of peanuts and massively expensive Atkins bars.

It worked for me as a quick, effective weight loss

Long term though, it's hard to sustain. As I said, main meals were fine, but most snacks are sugar laden, including fruit.

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Stop drinking alcohol, find a hobby that occupies your mind, things like tv and surfing the internet just leave you open to snacking, if you get properly involved in something then you lose the desire to snack.

Fad diets like the Atkins are not healthy, Dr Atkins died of a heart attack and was clinically obese at the time.

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I'm off alcohol for the time being, I drink maybe a glass of sugar free squash a day and a diet coke a couple of times a week, rest of the time it's regular glasses of water. Like I said, I now rarely snack between meals, I just don't feel as hungry as I did before which is great.

I don't plan on doing it for years and years, maybe a few months, until I've reached my goal weight, at which point I can reintroduce healthier carbs back into my diet and cut the fat back again.

I'm aware of the health concerns what with increased fat consumption and sudden depletion of glycogen stores but again, it's not a long term thing. Even doing lots of cardio, both high intensity and low, cutting carbs, cutting calories wasn't working that well for me. I don't know if that's genetics or my body's adaptation to my lifestyle up to this point but at the end of the day it wasn't having that much effect for whatever reason. Search for ketogenic diet results and you'll find a lot of people who this has worked incredibly for. That's my main motivation for it.

I'll see how it's going in a couple of weeks.

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I follow a paleolithic diet and have for about 18 months.

It's a lot less complicated than these fad diets really and is basically a hunter/gatherer diet. Essentially, you eat only those foods that were available to man before the agricultural revolution approx 10 000 years ago. The arrival of 'modern' agriculture happened too fast for our bodies to evolve to these new foods so we're not built to eat modern diets. Google it for more information but if you quit grains and dairy products, you'll get decent results not only for fat loss but other health benefits.

A good starting point is Robb Wolf's book. He's a biochemist who explains it far better than me.

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I'm off alcohol for the time being, I drink maybe a glass of sugar free squash a day and a diet coke a couple of times a week, rest of the time it's regular glasses of water. Like I said, I now rarely snack between meals, I just don't feel as hungry as I did before which is great.

I don't plan on doing it for years and years, maybe a few months, until I've reached my goal weight, at which point I can reintroduce healthier carbs back into my diet and cut the fat back again.

I'm aware of the health concerns what with increased fat consumption and sudden depletion of glycogen stores but again, it's not a long term thing. Even doing lots of cardio, both high intensity and low, cutting carbs, cutting calories wasn't working that well for me. I don't know if that's genetics or my body's adaptation to my lifestyle up to this point but at the end of the day it wasn't having that much effect for whatever reason. Search for ketogenic diet results and you'll find a lot of people who this has worked incredibly for. That's my main motivation for it.

I'll see how it's going in a couple of weeks.

If you are anything like me you'll reach a plateau. The first stone flew off, then everything slowed down. On the pure Atkins, alcohol wasn't a problem at all.. I just pissed it out with the ketones.

Anyway, good luck with it.

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I follow a paleolithic diet and have for about 18 months.

It's a lot less complicated than these fad diets really and is basically a hunter/gatherer diet. Essentially, you eat only those foods that were available to man before the agricultural revolution approx 10 000 years ago. The arrival of 'modern' agriculture happened too fast for our bodies to evolve to these new foods so we're not built to eat modern diets. Google it for more information but if you quit grains and dairy products, you'll get decent results not only for fat loss but other health benefits.

A good starting point is Robb Wolf's book. He's a biochemist who explains it far better than me.

Similar argument with the Atkins.. Apparently there were very few fat 'hunter gatherers'. The rubbish carbs are in modern processed foods, especially bread. Look at the sugar (not the fat) content of most ready meals... Absolutely laden with it... Modern foods are strongly linked with diabetic conditions because most of us eat a lot of sugar without really knowing it.

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Didn't want a start a new thread because this is vaguely related, but does anyone use protein shakes with exercise? Might be being naive here but do they help to lose weight, tone up, gain muscle?

You might find this thread helpful: http://www.foxestalk.co.uk/forums/topic/81164-any-protein-shake-drinkers-on-here/page__hl__protein

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Didn't want a start a new thread because this is vaguely related, but does anyone use protein shakes with exercise? Might be being naive here but do they help to lose weight, tone up, gain muscle?

My son is into weight training and is a keep fit fanatic. He always tells me to be careful of the high protein shakes. If you take them regularly and then don't work out hard enough to burn them off, you will apparently gain weight. There are supplements on the market specifically for toning up..and for weight loss.but I don't use them personally so I don't know if they work or not.

I'm sure there are others who can speak with more authority than me on this but this is what he tells me.

What is a fallacy apparently is this thing about 'turning fat into muscle'... Fat is fat and muscle is muscle. What you need to try to do is to lose fat and to grow muscle. The shakes will help you to simply work out for longer.

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I was 14 1/2 stone at the start of last year, decided to do something about it. I halved my portion size overnight, cut out carbs altogether and cycled 10-15 miles every evening. Lost 2 stone in 3 weeks, and after another 3 or 4 months I was down to 10 stone. I'll still have fatty foods, not as often as I did before but it's the carbs that were keeping me porky!

Only thing is, now I'm a 28" waist - my 36"/46" chest motorcycle leathers don't fit at all anymore. Wonder if they'll shrink in a hot wash...

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I follow a paleolithic diet and have for about 18 months.

It's a lot less complicated than these fad diets really and is basically a hunter/gatherer diet. Essentially, you eat only those foods that were available to man before the agricultural revolution approx 10 000 years ago. The arrival of 'modern' agriculture happened too fast for our bodies to evolve to these new foods so we're not built to eat modern diets. Google it for more information but if you quit grains and dairy products, you'll get decent results not only for fat loss but other health benefits.

A good starting point is Robb Wolf's book. He's a biochemist who explains it far better than me.

Now that sounds like an interesting diet, bread and cheese are big weaknesses of mine, but how do you make sandwiches without bread?

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My Mum & Dad did this diet before where all you eat is soup and drink cranberry juice, on the fifth or sixth day you can each as much red meat as you like you can lose a stone a week! Only aloud to do it for two weeks at a time well you're not but it's not advised to do so.... I'll try and post it up of anyone wants it.

Post it up mate, thanks :thumbup:

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