Losing weight

A topic bought up elsewhere.
It's hard to lose weight. Foods very enjoyable and we HAVE to eat.

My lovely wife and I took up the CSIRO 'Total Wellbeing' diet.
It's worked wonders. I am not really 'on the scheme' but joined her for practicalities sakes and as a normal husband would.
Over the last 18 months or so, I have lost 10 kgs, from 94 kgs to 83.
I still have chips, camembert and beer.

Most diets are deprivation, over the long haul this will fail.
This does not 'feel' like a diet. We never feel hungry unless by choice.

There is much to food combinations and your metabolism.
Retraining gradually your system to a much healthier mode.
Your body has ALWAYS been telling you a 'big' meal is bad.
That 'I feel so full' phrase means you ate twice as much as you needed.
You have just grossly overloaded a system that was already struggling.



For example, do not eat protein with carbs at the same meal.
eg, Steak and chips = NO
Steak and potatoes = NO

Steak and salad = YES

@Casey Jones

Hi.
I am happy to help you.

Who cares what you think of me, this may help you.

No potatoes.  That's been a rule of thumb for me for eight years, now.

Sometimes I have to cheat, as in, eating something processed.  Like a can of stew - when I'm not home.  Or when il grocerio is bare in the shelf, or looted or burned down.  Canned stew is in some evidence in my pantry.

I have meat and vegetables.  Breakfast is the same most days - a two-egg omlette, with cheese and a small amount of pork sausage.  No toast.

Midmorning, Metamucil.  For the fiber...move the mail, dontcha know.

Noon, I might have primarily meat; or might have one of my prepared low-carb frozen meals.  Yeah, lame.  I've done zero-carb cooking and it tastes so bad, I wonder why I bothered. So, I'll buy an Atkins single-serving or a Healthy Choice Zero plate. Not cheap, but I can afford it.

If I go with the protein only, it's typically broiled chicken.  I get it cheap locally - sold out of the store deli; what they don't sell at the end of lunch rush, they chill and package, marked down.  Those birds look like hell, but in fact they're plenty tasty.

No sauce or coating.  Maybe a butter basting.

Dinner, will be a plate of vegetables only; or mixed with light meat.  Or, I'm rotating survival food, right now; if I were cooking, I might try a steak...except that it's hard to get steak right now.   The Everything Shortage.  The survival food I'm rotating is 15 years old, when it had an eight-year guaranteed shelf life.  Carbs are listed on it.

Typical daily carb count is about 80-100.  Occasionally lower.

The hardest part is not cheating.  With my evening snack out of the way (no-sugar Russel Stover chocolates; one piece won't kill me) my stomach was still screaming, so I went back for a second plate of chicken.

Even with all the cheating, it's working.  I'm down to 225 this morning.  That's seven pounds from where I started.

I hear you

............. The hardest part is not cheating. ...........

If the focus is on 'limiting calorie intake', the focus in on calorie intake.
Noone can resist chocolate cake if the guidelines are 'Don't think of chocolate cake.'


For breakfast, a balanced meal is coffee and toast, fruit toast or not.
Or rolled oats, yoghurt and fruit salad.
Your digestive system is 'waking up' don't pummel it from the word go.
Give yourself some time to ....... activate.

I am NOT having a go at you.
Protein, protein and fat, and protein and fat for brekky ......... is not giving your system a fighting chance. It's already struggling.

The later you wait till brekky the better.
I often wake up, have a few glasses of water and go and do stuff.
I have brekky at work at about 10.30 am, of not later.
My system has from 8.00 pm the night before till 10.30 the next day to process the input.
I've done it for years and not died once.
An empty stomach is healthy.

This is a HUGE leap for everyone's mind.
Your digestive system will LOVE you for it.

I've had better luck with the stuff based on the Atkins principle, or Keto.

Fat doesn't make you fat. Carbs make you fat.

I've done a close-to-zero-carb diet in the past, but in doing that, you get that acetone stink on your breath. If you don't know it's to be expected, it's disconcerting...it's bad when you can smell your own stink.

These days, I'll settle for under-75 grams of carbohydrate.

That means, no toast. I take Metamucil and eat broccoli for fiber.

Casey Jones wrote:I've had better luck with the stuff based on the Atkins principle, or Keto.

Fat doesn't make you fat.  Carbs make you fat.

I've done a close-to-zero-carb diet in the past, but in doing that, you get that acetone stink on your breath.  If you don't know it's to be expected, it's disconcerting...it's bad when you can smell your own stink.

These days, I'll settle for under-75 grams of carbohydrate.

That means, no toast.  I take Metamucil and eat broccoli for fiber.

I've head of those, Atkins principle, or Keto, have a rough idea on them.
Never heard of the acetone breath thingie ! Bet that was a bit disconcerting.

Sprintcyclist wrote:

Casey Jones wrote:I've had better luck with the stuff based on the Atkins principle, or Keto.

Fat doesn't make you fat.  Carbs make you fat.

I've done a close-to-zero-carb diet in the past, but in doing that, you get that acetone stink on your breath.  If you don't know it's to be expected, it's disconcerting...it's bad when you can smell your own stink.

These days, I'll settle for under-75 grams of carbohydrate.

That means, no toast.  I take Metamucil and eat broccoli for fiber.

I've head of those,  Atkins principle, or Keto, have a rough idea on them.
Never heard of the acetone breath thingie ! Bet that was a bit disconcerting.

There's a change in body metabolism when avoiding all carbs. The stink is part of that.

Long before I'd heard of Atkins...I mean thirty years ago...before I went railroading, I worked a number of jobs that had me meeting the public. Occasionally I'd get a similar smell off someone's breath. Made me think they were ill...uncontrolled diabetes, or similar.

Maybe that was the cause; but you get it with Atkins, also. When I was trying that, I read of the process online...a nurse explained it better. It's not harmful (she said) - the processes that have you losing weight fast with body-fat consumption, also release wastes into your breath.

But, the everpresent stink of my own breath, got to me. That and that it isn't convenient when working a traveling job on the railroad...

Very true Casey.

I think those big dramatic changes are not a good idea.
Just bring in changes bit by bit. In a way you are comfortable with.
Any improvement is a good thing.
Some people mistake what is 'nice' food with what is 'good' food.
Their mind gets trained into what tastes nice rather than what tastes good.

People end up wanting more nice food when their body is really saying 'Give me good food.'
So they eat more nice food and are still hungry.

One thing with the 'Total WellBeing' diet that surprised me is how many herbs they use. Herbs by the handfull.
My body loved it, I was probably 'low' in whatever those foods had.

As I got used to more good food, I wanted less 'nice' food.

Foods like peas, zucchinis, brocolli are much less dense than foods like cheese, meats, pizzas etc etc.
So a bowl of greens have a LOT less impact than a similar sized bowl full of pizza.
After the bowl of greens, your body will say 'hhhmmm, let it settle for a while while I process that.' But you won't fell that heavy bloated full feeling.

HHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmm, had one of our 'happy tummy' meals tonight.

Pumpkin mash, beans and salmon.
REALLY NOICE