Help a man with his DIET Yes, I have a question about diet. I'm a pretty fit guy...I guess a little bit above average. I'm not fat by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm not exactly "skinny". Well, I kind of am. Let me explain: My whole body is skinny and pretty much lean. Hips, legs, arms, blah blah. Then we get to the stomach. Ooooh praise the lord almighty I have the biggest gut since...you know what I mean. Anyways, I've tried everything, and nothing works. My little gut remains there. And it's bad. I don't overexaggerate when I say that people are in SHOCK when they see it. Think Tiger Woods taking of his shirt, revealing a Jack Nicholson gut. Anyways, it doesn't help that I usually decide to go on a diet...and end up eating like a horse anyway. Assuming I would not stray from my diet at all: What kind of foods and stuff should I stay away from? Should I be getting 100% carbs, fiber, and all that good stuff? Or only 50%? 20%? Besides fat, saturated fat, sugar, and calories, is there anything else in foods that attributes to weight gain? Or an enlargement of the gut, for that matter? I don't drink alcohol ever, so thats not it. :drink: Yall don't have to type up an essay...a short "Stay away from carbs get as little as possible" will do. I just want some advice so I can get t3h chix0rs. gg
Ok, I'll see what I can do to help. First of all, cut the carbs down to minimum. You need some, so don't cut them out all together, but keep them to morning meals so that you can expend them throughout the day and they won't turn to fat from inactivity. Never eat carbs within four hours (preferably six) of going to bed. There are two kinds of carbs: simple and complex. Things like white bread, white pasta and such are simple carbs. These are bad. Whole grains, grain pasta and the like are better. Whenever you can get grained bakery goods and not the saturated white stuff. Second, protein. Lots of it. The more the better. Excess protein is mostly just excreted from the body anyways so you don't have to worry about it. Egg whites, whey powder, milk, meat, yogurt and cheese are the stuff of the gods. Go easy on the cheese and milk, though, since they have high fat content. Make sure you get 0% fat yogurt. Thirdly, fat. Cut it. You still need fat in your diet, so don't go nuts, but try to keep it down as much as possible. That means no cheese sticks, fried foods, egg yolks, bar food, and other greasy crap. Eat low fat margarine instead of butter. Get low fat peanut butter instead of regular. Pringles and chips will give you a pregnant glow faster than you can turn around. Fourthly, sugar. Worst thing ever for losing weight. No pop/soda. No junk food. Fake sugars are the worst. There is no worse thing you can consume than coke and the like. Sugar turns into fat, and fast. That's all it's good for. Get rid of it. Fifth, allow yourself a cheat day. One day a week where you can eat whatever you want. It keeps you sane and makes you a lot, and I mean a LOT, less likely to cheat throughout the week which is worse in the long run. Sixth. If you've hit a plateau, which you always will when relying on only diet, your only recourse is exercise. Everyone has a certain point where no matter what they do to their diet it won't help them lose weight. This is the body's natural defence mechanism against starvation. Cardio and diet are the only two ways to lose weight. There is no other. You need to burn more calories than you consume each day. The only way to do that once you get your diet in check is to actively burn them off. Seven. You can't spot target. This means that there is no way to lose weight on just your abs, or your arms or whatever. The body doesn't work that way. You can't target certain fat clusters by doing certain exercises. The body will only tap what fat resources it needs to survive and will do it more or less evenly throughout the body. You can do crunches until your spine snaps in half and you won't burn the fat on your stomach any faster. Get on a treadmill. You have to burn those calories all through your body to get anywhere specific to go down. Eight. Do weights. Muscle, by simple virtue of existing, burns calories. The more muscle you have, the more energy they need to keep up. Therefore the larger your muscles are, the easier it is to lose weight. In this respect you can target certain areas to help give it a kick. But it won't work all that effectively because your body is still drawing energy from its fat stores all over your body. But more muscle = more efficient energy use. The more calories used in the upkeep of your muscles, the less calories that will be stored as fat. Any questions?
exercise Thin limbs and fat belly ? Methinks you don't need a diet but rather exercise. A lot of exercise (it's fun, too). Or else if the idea of exercise repels you, then accept to keep thin limbs and a fat belly for the rest of your life and don't worry about it. P.S. If you ARE already exercising, then you are a mystery to me :scratch:
The most important thing when going on a diet is not to diet. Don't make changes that you can't live with, don't try anything ridiculous like eating cabbage soup 2x a day... cut out the junk food, and increase the exercise. Its a one-two punch that can't fail.
simple sugars are bad for you but complex carbs are fine. Don't cut carbs just switch to whole grain stuff. Bad advice, excess protein causes undue strain on your liver and kidneys. (probably one of the big things that causes renal failure in no/low carb diets) right on the money except for the butter. the fake stuff isn't any better for you. instead, only eat oils that are liquid at room temperature. I could get into the chemistry of this but it would probably put everyone to sleep. right on yup Cardio isn't the be all end all of weight loss. Strength training works wonders in raising metabolism. Also, excercise time is better than intensity. a slow 3 mile run will do more than a 1 mile sprint Yup true. Another tip is always eat breakfast. it raises your metabolism for the rest of the day.
I try to keep them low anyways, just to avoid the conversion of fat. I don't cut them out completely, but I definently keep carbs in check. I'm speaking from a bodybuilding perspective. Protein is the main pillar of my diet and I need it that way. But, like I said, I still keep carbs in my diet. No carb diets are just stupid. It was pretty misleading when I said the more the better, though. I wasn't really thinking. I should've said to keep it at about 1-1.5g per lb of body weight. Depends. If you get the low fat/low sodium/natural oil margarine it can be a lot better for you than natural butter. Gotta shop around, though. Cardio is secondary to diet for weight loss, but is still essential. Weight lifting and diet can take you only so far and then you just need to do some running to keep from hitting a plateau. I'm heavy on the weights all the time and I still need to do cardio to keep the weight off.
there is no such thing as low fat oil. oil is fat. what makes butter bad for you is that it is saturated fat (long straight fats that have Van Der Wals interactions). when they make oils solid at room temperature they do it by either hydrogenating it (saturating it) or switching Cis bonds to Trans bonds. the effect in either case is the same, more Van Der Wals interactions. Low sodium doesn't do any more than unsalted butter They do have that stuff they make WOW chips with but that gives you the runs and I don't know of any fake butter made out of it.
So is margarine made from saturated fats? Hey now... the runs can be an effective way to lose weight.
Not to hijack the thread, but I'm pretty darn gosh overweight as well. I can cop out and blame it on an old accident which get me bed ridden for close to half a year but that was like 3-4 years ago. I guess I'm just lazy, but I really need to make an effort. Now the thing is, I'm a poor college student. What kind of foods do you suggest I eat, taking in mind that I dont have wads of cash lying around. I'm not a soda guy, plain water and milk is fine with me. I guess my biggest downfall is fast food. So any suggestions? Oh and I'm like 6 foot 1 inch and around 190-200 pounds ><,mostly concentrated on the stomach
Thanks Anakah, I will follow your advice. I didn't really need like...scientific explanations, just something in simple terms, and your guide was perfection perfected :thumbsup:. And BTW people, I've been lifting weights 45 mins a day 3 days a week and doing 15 mins cardio pretty much every day for the last 3 months...so that's not the reason. I will especially try to not eat much before I go to sleep. Ppl always tell me that but I never teh listen . Anyways in a month I'll post nude pictures of myself on the board. One from every angle, so yall can see if I've gotten better. TY TY TY
Carnage, there's got to be some healthy fast food lying around your campus somewhere. Even a Subway will do the trick. Also, salads are pretty cheap to make provided you buy the stuff and assemble the salad on your own, not one of those "salad in a bag" kinds of things. Also, cook more for yourself. Stuff you buy at any food place is going to be more unhealthy than what you cook, well, generally anyway. Find a diet cookbook or something. I know that's a lot harder than it sounds though. I've got almost no fridge room at my house to keep food I'd like to cook. Unfortunately, I don't get to cook my own food very often at all. Also, more cardio would be good. 15 minutes every day is a great start, and probably more than most people get. If you want to lose that gut though, maybe 30 minutes a day would be better. Anahakasahaka, why are fake sugars the worst? Do you mean stuff like NutriSweet and the like? I admittedly consume much of this, addiction to diet pop or somesuch. So even though it's got zero calories, it's still bad for me? (Wouldn't surprise me, though).
Yes, this is what I always wanted to know. Is Diet Soda still bad for you even though it has 0 calories and sugars? How about "I can't believe it's not butter?" Less fat and saturated fat...is it worse than plain oil?
I was thinking more along the lines of things with sugar added into it. Lots of things, like fruit, has natural sugar in it. These are better for you than manufactured sugar. Why that is, I can't remember, so maybe I'm talking out of my patootie. I do know, however, that sugar is very very bad for you if you're trying to lose weight. It converts to fat like crazy. I can't remember the names of the naturally occuring sugars (is it fructose and glucose?) and the names of the manufactured sugars, but my rule is that if it has sugar added to it in large amounts that doesn't occur naturally, I stay away from it. I dunno about diet soda since I don't drink any soda. Diet or not, soda has zero nutritional value whatsoever. Even lacking sugar it adds absolutely nothing healthy to your diet and can do only harm. Less saturated fat is good. I for one refuse to cut out margarine completely from my diet, so you're going to get fat in there somewhere. As long as you keep it under control you're ok. You need a bit of fat in your diet anyways. It's necessary.
yes, or partially hydrogenated fats which aren't really any better EDIT: ankaganagata, fructose is what you get in fruit, glucose is what your body turns calories into when it metabolizes them, Lactose is the sugar in milk, sucrose is table sugar (a disacaride made of one fructose and one glucose), starch is a chain of sugars, cellulose is a chain of tightly bonded sugars that you can't break down.
