I am officially off the low-carb diet, due to the attack of gout and other concerns. It did what it was supposed to do, though… I lost 9 pounds on it in 3 weeks. That rate is probably too aggressive, though.
The directions from my doctor(*) are to follow a low-calorie, low-fat diet. Which sort of leaves the door open to any number of diets. The deciding factor for me is that I want something that’s easy to figure out. That is, I want to be able to eat a sensible breakfast and lunch, and then instantly (or at least quickly) figure out what would be best for dinner in order to balance things out.
So, here are some options I’m thinking about (though if there’s something I’m not considering, please let me know!)
1. Dietary exchanges (the diabetes diet) – Based on the USDA pyramid, the “exchanges” diet breaks down your diet by taking a certain number of calories (like 1800 or 2000) and divides it into starch exchanges, meat exchanges, dairy exchanges, etc. An 1800-calorie diet breaks down into: 3 milk, 4 vegetable, 4 fruit, 7 bread, 7 meat, and 9 fat. A single exchange (like “bread”) can represent different serving sizes of different foods (like 1 slice of bread, or 1/2 cup cooked rice, or 1 cup dry cereal, etc). Foods that have combinations of ingredients can represent multiple exchanges, for example, a cup of lasagna would equal 2 carbohydrate exchanges and 2 medium-fat meat exchanges.
The ratio is based on the USDA recommendations, but there’s no rule that says you have to follow their ratio — for example, if you want to lean in one direction or the other you can just change your daily exchanges of each type slightly. There is also some emphasis on planning your eating many times during the day (Breakfast, Lunch, Afternoon snack, Dinner, Bedtime snack) which I like.
What I like about the exchanges system is that a. it has “balanced” built into it, and b. it controls calories without actually counting calories. And c. it’s easy to figure out. Since it is widely used by diabetics and some others, there are actually recipe books and even some food labels that say “This counts as 1 meat and 1 milk exchange” etc. (There was a diet M and I followed briefly produced by Richard Simmons that was based on these units, and had a scorecard with little windows for each category. The materials were insipid but the actual system was easy to figure out).
2. Weight watchers online. I have heard good things about this diet. I get the feeling that it is based on “points” which are similar to exchanges, only I don’t know if they are broken out into food groups or if it’s just “this food is 10 points” or what. Also, it takes activity into account, which is good, if I get around to exercising I can take the activity points and reward myself with a food that I want. I like the flex points concept which allows you to go over your daily diet occasionally without falling into the “ok, I failed, might as well eat this cake too” trap.
I’m not sure if I want to pay the fee and join the program. I think I can probably do this on my own, but if WW makes it easier, and increases chance of success, then it’s probably worth it. I spend at least that amount of money on eating out, why shouldn’t I gladly spend it on getting healthy? Also on the positive side, you get some cool materials, and you get to keep the materials even if you stop using the program.
What I don’t like about it is that just a straight “points” system doesn’t seem balanced to me. Can you eat 15 slices of bread and nothing else and still be OK on “points”, or are there different kinds of points like there are in the Exchanges system?
3. “Half-assed” diet. This is the ultimate no-math plan. Ambar was the one who introduced me to it: put what you normally eat on your plate, then put half back. Stick to it, and you lose half your ass.
I tried this before and I think that’s pretty much how I got from 270 to 255. The “free association approach” to portion control totally appeals to the no-counting side of me. It’s probably a bit too unstructured, though… I probably need to be on a counting diet like Exchanges or WW for a while before I have a sort of natural feeling for what my body needs and what a “normal person” diet feels like.
(*) After seeing my doctor, he is pretty sure that what’s going on with my foot is really gout, but they drew some blood to verify that uric acid is actually high. I have been told not to take thiazide (a diuretic) for blood pressure, and to double up on the other BP med (lotensin, an ACE inhibitor), and I was given a script for indomethacin (anti-inflammatory, similar to advil or alleve), and colchicine (which is pretty much only used for gout). I need to go back in 1 mo. to check on both gout and B.P.
My problem is feeling hungry on many of these diets. It really makes me slow down both mentally and physically. If I had the money I’d check out the nutri system plan, but then, arg, never that affluent. :)
WW is based on points. You can figure out point values based on calories, but no, it doens’t enforce strict eating habits. However, there are lots of recipes on their website, and there are many foods that are free, or close to it. But it very much leaves it up to YOU to make the balanced choices. Good if you understand what a healthy diet should be like, bad if you’re nutritionally uneducated.
I am unofficially counting points, and it’s actually pretty easy. Mostly, you have to avoid really fatty foods (fried stuff) and eat lots more veggies. :)
3. “Half-assed” diet.
Hee! I like that one a lot, but I couldn’t stick with it. I call my diet the “Be Reasonable, Stupid!” diet because it’s just that: reasonable. I don’t want to go hungry, but I want to lose weight. I don’t eat any sugar (in the form of things like candy, cake, etc. Sugar in bread is fine. No food whose purpose is just being sweet). I don’t eat fast food (since I don’t eat meat, that’s an easy one). I try to avoid fried things as much as possible.
If I feel a driving need to eat chips, I get a small bag (those lunchbox sized ones, a true “one serving bag”) and eat those. If I really, really, really wanted, I’d let myself have a true “single serving” of cookies.
If you say “you can’t ever ever ever have X food that you love” I think you’re likely to fail. Be reasonable about it. Don’t go crazy in either direction (I believe Atkins is going crazy in one direction, just as eating a whole bag of candy is going crazy in another). Just be reasonable about life. Don’t exercise to death, but don’t “not exercise” either.
That’s what’s working for me. I’ve been losing 1-2 pounds most weeks for almost a year now. (Well, other than the winter when I didn’t exercise, I just stayed the same weight then.)
Good luck!
Exchange Diet & Weight Watchers
Just one comment about the Exchange Diet:
Based on the USDA pyramid
…which has been changed recently, so this is outdated at least according to the USDA (or FDA or whoever the hell comes up with the nutritional guidelines in this country :).
Weight Watchers
As you well know, this is the one I can probably speak to most knowledgeably. Lemme see if I can address some of the things in your post about that.
I get the feeling that it is based on “points” which are similar to exchanges, only I don’t know if they are broken out into food groups or if it’s just “this food is 10 points” or what.
POINTS (as Weight Watchers spells it in their online foo) are the latter–“this food is N POINTS”. But it’s a little more complicated than that as well (later)
I like the flex points concept which allows you to go over your daily diet occasionally without falling into the “ok, I failed, might as well eat this cake too” trap.
Actually (and here I am just edjicating), Flex Points is technically the name for one of their two programs, the one you’re probably most familiar with because that’s the one , , and I are all doing. You are given a daily allowance of X number of POINTS per day (based on your weight at the time of your last weekly weigh-in), to spend how you choose.
There is also something called a Core Plan, which gives you a list of approved foods you can, theoretically, eat as much as you want, although the guideline is ‘eat until you are just full and then stop’, but any foods not in the approved list is verboten. Given what you’ve said about your previous diet modifications, I’m not sure if this would work well for you or not (I decided that it wasn’t a good idea for me, and I think you and I have similar mental obstacles towards modifying our eating habits).
The pool you’re referring to is technically referred to as a “Weekly POINTS Allowance”, and are available on *both* plans. I think we’re just all lazy and call them Flex Points.
But, now not being obnoxious and helping–I love the Flex Points system and the Weekly Allowance pool. Because even without dipping into the Weekly Allowance, I can do stuff like, as you said, have that piece of cake, and not create the false sense of guilt or the trap you describe. I *can* have that cake, it’s *okay* to have that cake, I just know I need to make sensible decisions otherwise to budget that treat in. And once you get proficient at the system, budgeting becomes pretty easy.
I’m not sure if I want to pay the fee and join the program.
Then don’t. :) Aelf got a copy of some official Weight Watchers book which has lists of hundred if not thousands of foods and their POINTS value and was doing it on her own for months. Problem is supposed to be hard to get because you have to buy it in quantity. However, I would really like to get a copy of it myself, so maybe if I can find out exactly where to order it, some of us on the plan can split the cost.
I can also make a stab at how the POINTS change with ones weight and could probably post that list, and Merlin has the mathematical formula for how they calculate POINT values for foods based on Calories, fat, and fiber, and one of my friends () found the formula for Activity Points.
WW makes it easier, and increases chance of success, then it’s probably worth it. I spend at least that amount of money on eating out, why shouldn’t I gladly spend it on getting healthy?
That’s kind of what I think. And having it be online really is that convenient for me (except, of course, when I don’t have computer access :).
Also on the positive side, you get some cool materials, and you get to keep the materials even if you stop using the program.
Sadly, the hardcopy materials only are obtained if you go to meetings, as far as I can tell. I haven’t gotten anything from them from being online, other than their weekly news letters.
Re: Exchange Diet & Weight Watchers (part deux)
(Apparently, I can go on at length about this–the end of what I was originally commenting :)
What I don’t like about it is that just a straight “points” system doesn’t seem balanced to me. Can you eat 15 slices of bread and nothing else and still be OK on “points”, or are there different kinds of points like there are in the Exchanges system?
There are not different kinds of POINTS, but it’s not quite that straight.
You have your Daily POINTS target (and it is a target–a *minimum* amount you want to eat in a day). But within that target, they also recommend (but not require) that you eat 5 servings of fruits & vegetables and 3 servings of milk or milk products. The former, because f&v’s are good for you; the latter, because some studies have apparently come out that have found that some property of milk actually aids in weight loss (plus, you need your calcium)!
I try very hard to hit these two targets within my POINTS.
After that–yeah, technically you could go and eat 15 slices of bread and nothing else, but really, would you want to? :)
The best utilization of the plan is to hit those two targets then to round out the rest of the day with stuff you know, nutritionally-wise, you need, like lean protein, whole grains, some fat, etc.
I try to avoid, on a general basis, things like sugar, white flour, white rice, and potatoes because some studies have come to show that these types of carbs, particularly, have a high glycemic index, causing your blood sugar to spike (therefore leading to blood sugar crashes, which cause the hungries and can lead to yo-yo’ing blood sugar and uncontrollable eating). I try to use Splenda when I need a sweetner, whole wheat flour stuff, brown rice, both because they have low glycemic indices (the rise in blood sugar they cause is much lower than a spike and tapers off gently rather than crashing) and because they tend to have a lot of fiber, meaning they are lower in POINTS.
And some fat is good. :) Both because your body needs it and because it provides POINTS. I, myself, and at least one other friend of mine who joined WW after I did actually had a problem at the beginning of cutting out so much we were habitually *under* points. My solution was to allow some fat in my diet–primarily through things like 2% skim milk cheese (which counts as a Milk serving!) or maybe a little bit of butter or butter-substitute (I’m a big fan right now of something called Brummel & Brown spread, which is a ‘margarine’ based on yogurt) on my veggies. Which also helps me feel not so deprived.
—
Apologies that this is long and drawn out, but I hope it helps. :) And you can always ask me questions on my own WW posts.
Re: Exchange Diet & Weight Watchers (part deux)
Wow, thanks for the excellent info.
It sounds like the actual diets, as in the actual food itself, are pretty similar between the exchanges system and the POINTS system. The concept of having minimum servings of things rather than just straight points seems like it would be a lot more balanced than points alone.
I was assuming that one would get some materials, if not printed, then at least online web pages, etc, if you were to sign up for WW online. As a non-member it’s not immediately obvious what foods count as what POINTS, but hopefully once you log in as a member tracking becomes a lot easier. There is apparently something called etools that is available to meeting-goers, and I assume those are the same tools that are free as part of the online-based subscription.
I don’t like the idea of going to meetings, not because meetings are bad, just because I don’t want to commit to a certain time and place. I am somewhat more comfortable with online communities and interactions than in-person interactions, but that’s a secondary or tertiary concern. But if the meeting-based program gives you more printed materials, I would consider signing up and going to one or two meetings just to get the materials.
Have you checked out the etools stuff, or do you know someone who has, and is it worth it?
Again, thanks for the excellent info.
gregc
Exchange Diet vs. Weight Watchers, & eTools
The concept of having minimum servings of things rather than just straight points seems like it would be a lot more balanced than points alone.
It may be balanced–but being ‘balanced’ also depends on buying into the idea that the food pyramid scheme is True (which I don’t).
I kind of go by gut instincts, i.e., I know I need fruits and veggies and some carbs and some fats and proteins, try to have some at every meal, and maybe more importantly, listen to my cravings. If I want protein, I eat protein. If I really want some fat, I make sure to budget for some. Etc. I don’t really think you can go too far off, using either system.
Have you checked out the etools stuff, or do you know someone who has, and is it worth it?
I’m not sure exactly what the eTools are in terms of that particular phrasology, but I do use the Weight Watchers Online website extensively. The two parts I use the most:
* POINTS tracker – It allows you to input what you eat for each ‘meal’ (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snakcs) and keep a running tally of your POINTS for the day. There is a database of something like 20,000 different foods and their POINT totals that users have access to, including many commercially available foods (e.g., Kraft foods, Applebee’s, Subway), plus the ability to add in your own food entries if you know the Calorie count, fat (grams), and fiber (grams) and have it available to you from that point forward.
There is also a way to do a ‘quick input’ (just put the name of a food and its POINT total in and add it to a meal-slot). There is a POINTS calculator for use with this, or if you just want an idea of exactly how many points that In’n’Out Cheeseburger is (answer: about 9 :).
Foods you have frequently can be added to a ‘Favorites’ list which is accessible via a drop-down box for easy access and addition to the Tracker.
It also includes a list of exercises and the ability to add exercises to this daily planner, ‘returning’ your Activity Points into the mix, and like the POINTS Calculator, another calculator where you can input custom exercise (like my Curves and DDR) to get an AP value based on your current weight, how long you exercised for, and the relative difficulty level (low, moderate, or high).
When you save your entries (and you have to actually hit ‘Save’, it is not automatically done for you–one thing Merlin has mentioned not liking), it will return a quick-and-dirty output of your POINTS target, how many POINTS are accounted for in what you just entered, number of APs spent, how far (if any) you’ve dipped into your Weekly POINTS Allowance, and how many Weekly POINTS you have left.
The POINTS tracker is fluid and can be edited at will from one weigh day to the next (i.e, a 7 day period).
Merlin did a review of this on his own journal a few weeks ago. It is mildly clunky, in some ways, but it’s usable.
* Recipe builder – I love this thing. It has access to the same 20K of food items and the ones you’ve put in. You start a recipe, give it a name, tell it how many servings its for, plug in ingredients and amounts from the food database list, hit [Save], and it spits out how many POINTS there are per serving.
Both these recipes and the Weight Watchers ones (they put out a new one every weekday) are also accessible in the POINTS Tracker via either ‘Favorite Recipes’ or the search tool, and can be added to your ‘Favorites’ list.
And, there is also a weight tracker where it will plot your weight loss. As you lose weight, it will automatically adjust your Daily POINTS goal for you.
And lastly, there is access to the daily tips they publish, weekly testimonials, and access to their bulletin boards to get some additional help from other people on programs. I don’t really have time to keep up on the bboards, but I like reading the rest.
*grins* I recommend a diet with Ramen as a staple, but perhaps use less of the seasoning / salt in it. You can get the salt flavor from adding, say, ham cubes, and swap out black pepper for flavor, or diced onions (also low calorie -and- high fiber — win win.
I do this on a semi-regular basis myself, though for other reasons.
-Traveller
[Found your journal via ]
There is also the GI diet which has a good grounding in nutritional science stuff. Basically it aims to keep your blood sugar levels relatively stable as much as possible. It was originally designed to help diabetics out, but it was also found that it helped people to loose weight as well.
It works by assigning foods a Glycemic Index (GI) which is a measure of how fast the food will end up as glucose in the blood; thus pure glucose gets a score of 100 and things like water or other foods which don’t elevate blood sugar end up with 0. You then need to eat food which is has a low GI (below ~50 or so) and avoid the high GI foods. It helps with weight loss as food with a low GI tends to make you feel fuller for longer. Its amusing in a way that the bowl of porrage I had this morning (made with milk, sultanas and mixed spice), whilst having quite a few calories, has quite a low GI and so is good (I calorie count right now and am slowly adding GI tracking into this, although I need to write some software first).
You may find the following book useful: The G.I. Diet : The Easy, Healthy Way to Permanent Weight Loss