Got a friend starting the paleo something something diet. Another one is on a carb cycle, whatever that is. Will let you know how it comes out. So far, I am watching and not joining in. I just try to eat as healthy and simply as possible.
I dunno. Where did ‘2100’ come from? Nobody knows how much they’re “supposed” to be burning unless they’ve spend 24 hours hooked up to a respirometer.
[quote]Knowing how many calories (approximately is fine) are in the most common foods people eat is very useful information. It doesn’t have to be an exercise in math and spreadsheet skills. It can be a good guide to curtail excessive eating.
It doesn’t matter at all how many calories are in green beans, broccoli, apples, or tilapia fillets. Eat as much of that stuff as you want. It matters VERY MUCH how many calories are in a big gulp, a movie theatre popcorn, or a fast food meal.[/quote]
Fair enough. I think we’re saying similar things but just talking past each other. It’s just different ways of presenting similar advice. It might seem like hair-splitting, but it matters. As you observed, people who think they can eat X calories are often misled into thinking they don’t have to modify their diet as such; they just have to force themselves to eat less. That’s painful, and it doesn’t even work very well.
However, telling people not to eat stodge, sugar, and junk food works better because the diet is self-reinforcing. You lose the taste for those things. It’s just so much easier and more intuitive.
As others just said, it might. Or it might not. An apple a day isn’t a problem. A 5-banana smoothie is a huge problem, especially if you add sugar. Fruit juices of all sorts will absolutely make you fat, reason being, the sugar has been extracted from the cells that contained it, and you’re left with something that’s nutritionally similar to a Coke. The GI of the whole fruit is fairly modest. The GI of fruit puree suspended in a fructose solution is sky-high.
Absolutely. And that’s why a calorie is not just a calorie, and why ultimately it’s a bit pointless even estimating them.
Basically any of these options work. The key point is that most ‘healthy’ diets achieve their results by cutting out junk food and sweet stuff. As long as your diet includes that feature, you can mix and match and still get a result.
I can’t speak on why some people can’t do this, but I have been doing it for quite a few years now and I have every confidence that the majority of people could quite easily do the same with a little bit of practice.
Again, some basic analytical skills is more than adequate to determine a good approximation, and from there simple trial and error will suffice. I’m not sure why you guys are pretending this stuff is complicated. You seem to have a very low opinion of people to think they can’t do this.
Of course fruit can make you fat, but it’s not the fruit making you fat, it’s the fact that you consumed more than your daily caloric balance would allow. Why is this so hard for people to understand? If you ate 10 apples, and the rest of the day you ate lean meats, vegetables and whole grains, you wouldn’t be fat. If you eat 10 apples, AND 2000 other calories of whatever random mess that people like to eat, then yes you’ll gain weight. But it ain’t the apples making you gain the weight. it’s the other garbage that took you way over the caloric balance line that’s the culprit. It’s horrendously fragmented health advice to even suggest that fruit makes you fat.
Carrots can make you fat if you eat too many of them for god sakes. But is it solid health advice to say carrots make you fat?
No, there is absolutely no problem with a 5 banana smoothie, it’s as healthy as could be. 500 calories of one of the best quality foods on the planet. How on earth is that a problem 
Now if those 500 calories push you up and over your basic caloric balance for the day, then yeah you’ll gain weight. But might I suggest keeping the incredibly healthy 5 banana smoothie as is, and ditching whatever god awful foods you ate the rest of the day that made you gain weight?
Now side note, I always suggest people eat their fruit rather than drink it, because you’ll get all the nutrition and fiber and you’ll feel more full. But if people want to drink a 5 banana, or 10 banana smoothie and they still don’t breach their caloric balance for the day, go for it.
Really, just like that, just “tell” people not to eat bad foods works? How many times in the last 50 years do you think it’s been said to everybody that the majority of their diet should be comprised of lean meats, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains? Doesn’t everybody know this already? Seriously, point me to one single person in the developed world that doesn’t know they should be eating a healthy balanced diet excluding stodge, sugar, and junk food. There might be one living somewhere under a rock, but I dare you to find me two 
Yet what do you know, fat people abound… Clearly, we need to start with that very basic, and spot on advice by the way, and add to it some basic analytical skills to come to a middle ground where people can for the most part just eat better quality foods, but also understand a little bit more about just how many calories are in the most common foods we eat, and why some of them may or may not fit into our goals.
For the life of me I can’t figure out why such resistance to getting some basic caloric awareness into people. 
um … because it’s completely wrong?
Not what I said. Fruit has the potential to make you fat because people think it’s healthy and can eat as much as they like, or make smoothies with it.
Read up on:
- the function of insulin
- glycemic index
and you’ll have answered your own question.
Up until very recently, USDA advice has been to eat a diet based mostly on bread, pasta, and potatoes. Sugar has been described as ‘empty calories’ (=nothing to worry about). That’s gonna make you fat, for very basic physiological reasons. The proof is in the pudding: Americans are all fat, and they’ve got fatter since they started heeding that advice.
Funnily enough, it does. Because, as I said, if you follow the advice it modifies the way you want to eat food. Try it if you don’t believe me.
I’m not seriously arguing with someone who thinks 5 banana’s is unhealthy am I? :loco:
I seem to be arguing with someone who has made up his own theory about how the body works, instead of reading about what doctors and scientists know about it.
And that’s a 5-banana shake, not 5 bananas per se.
If you eat enough food that it puts you in a caloric surplus, you will gain weight. If you eat food that puts you in a caloric deficit, you lose weight. I can’t speak on the reasons why you personally can’t understand this because we’ve never met, but I assure you it’s a very well understood fact. You can literally go to any health site on YouTube, read any health book on the subject. People who get paid to maintain their own body weight and help others do the same talk constantly and repeatedly about caloric balance and maintenance levels, no different than I’m doing here. The reason they talk about it so so often is because some people 
still pretend this simple fact isn’t true.
The only missing pieces are what that caloric balance is for each individual, and what foods best accomplish it to give you the most nutritional bang for your buck so to speak. A caloric balance of jelly beans will do it, but that’s kind of a poor choice. A caloric balance of lean meats, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains is a much better choice. It’s actually not nearly as difficult as people think.
You could smash them with the bottom of your shoe and eat em, and the only thing that would be anything but extremely healthy would be the grime that came from the bottom of your shoe. 5 banana’s, in any pure form is as healthy as could be. As I said, it’s 500 calories of one of the best foods on the planet.
finley, is it the blending that fucks up smoothies? I often have these for breakfast because I hate solids, first thing and end up skipping breakfast and overeating at Starbucks or something.
I only use one banana but lots of fruit, nuts and seeds (I hate nuts and seeds and hide them in other food). Will it spike the insulin? I know its sugary but I put spinach in too.
That’s what I heard. Carrots turn sweet when you blend them. Honey will cover the taste of bitter greens.
I still think smoothies are one of the best ways to take in food, and the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
50 Kcal a day over your personal calorie burn capacity can make you fat over a time span of multiple years … it’s not overkill, but it makes you gain wait.
Even a beer or two a day wouldn’t make you gain wait if you keep your caloric balance, but on top of burger and fries and 5 bananas, peanut butter jelly sandwich … 
Apparently. Fruit in general is not bad, you just shouldn’t overdo it. It contains quite a bit of sugar, but it doesn’t all hit your bloodstream (or your liver) all at once because it’s locked up inside the cells of whatever-it-is. Of course it depends on the fruit. You chew it into bits, and eventually it gets digested, but your insulin response is very different to what you get if you pour blended fruit down your neck. You can probably find the research with a bit of googling.
I used to skip breakfast for years until I forced myself to actually eat it. My standard breakfast now is omelette/mushrooms/tomato/homemade sausage patty, small bowl of muesli, homemade greek yoghurt with nuts and honey, coffee, and a big bowl of salad. At first it was all a bit of chore. I really didn’t want it. After a week or two I was actually looking forward to it. That’s just what I personally ended up eating, but there’s a lot of leeway here. It’s worth making the effort to change your eating habits.
TBH if you hate nuts and seeds I wouldn’t bother. Find something else you like, something you can stick with. Basically any whole foods that aren’t full of starch are good stuff.
[quote=“Ermintrude”]finley, is it the blending that fucks up smoothies? I often have these for breakfast because I hate solids, first thing and end up skipping breakfast and overeating at Starbucks or something.
I only use one banana but lots of fruit, nuts and seeds (I hate nuts and seeds and hide them in other food). Will it spike the insulin? I know its sugary but I put spinach in too.[/quote]
Blending it doesn’t change the chemical composition of the food. What can happen is that people eat more fruit when they blend it than if they just ate it. And you can’t just judge foods based on the glycemic index. Nuts like almonds and cashews are very low in glycemic load and very high in calories.
I found this article hilarious because I know many people, friends and family members and acquaintances- that do all these crazy starving diets… and do not get the magical results, but they keep jumping form one fad to another.
9 Ways To Lose 10 Pounds In Less Than A Week — Or Faster
Lately, my immediate family has become wiser and hired nutritionists to do the planning. Mom’s not happy as she has lost a bit too much of the frontline and backside, she thinks. Can’t make them all happy.
[quote]Aiming to lose X amount of weight in Y amount of time isn’t a healthy way to approach diet and weight management — and it’s also setting yourself up for failure.
If your goal is to lose weight for health-related reasons (say, you’re dealing with diabetes, high blood pressure, joint and back pain, or other such issues): Work with your doctor and a registered dietitian or nutritionist to come up with an eating plan that meets your needs.
If your goal is more along the lines of wanting to feel better in general: Try to adopt some healthy living habits, rather than focusing on the number on the scale. Eat more yummy, healthy foods that give you fuel and make you feel good and energized. Get plenty of exercise, or at least make an effort to move and use your body each day, to whatever degree you can. You might get some motivation and ideas here. And get good sleep each night. Some pointers to help you sleep better here, if you need them.
Weight loss might happen as a result of making these lifestyle changes…but even if it doesn’t, you’ll still feel healthier, stronger, and more energized than you did when you started. And that’s a million times better than starving yourself, obsessing over every last calorie, and/or chopping off body parts willy nilly, IMHO.
[/quote]
This is the simplest explanation yet one that eludes most people. Health is more important and should be the goal.
Ermintrude, if you are concerned about the amount of sugar you are getting in your smoothies, you could try juicing veggies instead. I started doing this because my husband doesn’t like to eat breakfast either and it was the only way I could get him to consume something other than just coffee in the morning.
What’s wrong with a large bacon sandwich for breakfast? Four rashers of bacon, toasted brown bread, pepper and tomato sauce. With coffee and orange juice.
NOthing for lunch, then a piece of fruit for dinner, and a bottle of red wine.
That’s got all 5 food groups, and nearly no carbs. Surely. Kept me fit for years, that has.
[quote=“urodacus”]What’s wrong with a large bacon sandwich for breakfast? Four rashers of bacon, toasted brown bread, pepper and tomato sauce. With coffee and orange juice.
NOthing for lunch, then a piece of fruit for dinner, and a bottle of red wine.
That’s got all 5 food groups, and nearly no carbs. Surely. Kept me fit for years, that has.[/quote]
You eat like a teenaged girl. They’re usually healthy enough, I guess.
[quote=“urodacus”]What’s wrong with a large bacon sandwich for breakfast? Four rashers of bacon, toasted brown bread, pepper and tomato sauce. With coffee and orange juice.
NOthing for lunch, then a piece of fruit for dinner, and a bottle of red wine.
That’s got all 5 food groups, and nearly no carbs. Surely. Kept me fit for years, that has.[/quote]
No carbs? Orange juice. tomato sauce (if not home made), brown bread, fruit, wine … lot’s of carbs in that group 
Yeah, I like bacon and eggs for breakfast, or eggs on toast, or sausages or whatever. Completely controls my hunger for the rest of the day. I started eating this kind of breakfast while doing a stint as removalist because if I ate carbs I’d just be starving again by 11am, and a lunch of carbs would have me starving again by 3pm.
You could have a smoothie of 5 eggs, 5 times a day (with the shells in there for fibre, obviously) and that would be less than 2500 calories and you’d lose weight. Unless you did something ridiculous like eat fruit.
[quote=“antarcticbeech”]
You could have a smoothie of 5 eggs, 5 times a day (with the shells in there for fibre, obviously) and that would be less than 2500 calories and you’d lose weight. Unless you did something ridiculous like eat fruit.[/quote]
I am going to write a book called ‘50 Shades of Shite’ about how I got sexy times excreting 25 eggshells a day. The sequel will be called ‘Chicken Licken’. Or should it be the prequel? I’m no philosopher. I’m going to go and ask that guy on the other side of the road, there.
I’ve never heard a healthy person recommend a diet of bread, pasta and potatoes. I have however heard thousands of times a diet with a balance of the major food groups, and mainly sticking to lean meats, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. I don’t know where you went to school, but the basic food groups was literally drilled into us since we were children.
The problem isn’t not knowing. Everybody knows what a balanced healthy diet would look like, more or less. And happily, there are many different types that would qualify, not just one. The problem is people don’t have the caloric awareness, or the eating discipline to stick to it. And maybe, they just simply enjoy junk food more than they enjoy the benefits of a healthy body. Or maybe they’ve never had a healthy body to begin with and don’t have a basis for comparison.
But come on Finley, give the average person some credit. They know what a healthy diet looks like, they just choose not to follow it for some reason.
You’re right, you shouldn’t overdo anything. But overdoing it with regards to fruit would be a very difficult thing to achieve. 5 banana’s doesn’t even scratch the surface of overdoing it. There is nothing unhealthy at all with a fruitarian / vegan diet. There are countless world class athletes and fitness experts who eat huge amounts of fruit. It’s one of the healthiest foods on the planet. If more people ate 10+ pieces of fruit in a day, they’d find very quickly they have no desire to eat McDonalds or M&M’s.