Posts by zip2play

Throughout history MANY people have fasted for many reasons...sometimes in meditation seeking a "higher purpose," sometimes to break old habits, and sometimes because there simply was no FOOD .

I've tried it a couple times with a goal towards "clearing my mind" and perhaps seeing things differently...sort of quasi-spirituality. My problem is that by day 3 I get a MASSIVE headache that stops me in my tracks.

If you are going to fast remember, you will probably make your system VERY efficient once you go off it, so that may make continued weight loss difficult.

From everything I have read, any fasting should be WITHOUT food...only water. Reason I think juice fasting is silly or worse is that juice is SUGAR, a fast acting carbohydrate and little else. This screws with your insulin levels and blood sugar levels with a constant seesawing up and down. In a REAL fast the body regulates glucose levels and fat metabolism to a steady normal and keeps them there. The insulin response basically goes to sleep and hunger falls to zero. 

This constancy and lack of hunger signals is what aids people in their fast and their meditation. With a steady stream of sweet juices, the body is in constant turmoil...a terrible diet with constant hunger.

Solid food digests slowly and thus is far better for our metabolism than juices.

And remember most of all...without food, we are dead in 60 days.

I think that 1500 calories is about right if you want to maintain decent weight loss. As your weight decreases so will your weight loss, so don't expect the next pounds to be as easy as the first 70.

Congratualtions.

How fast are you losing at that 1500 calorie intake?

There's no way to avoid weight gain while on prednisone/cortisone. It's also an ugly, puffy looking water-retention kind of weight gain.

If you stop the prednisone the weight will come off. Anyone stopping must do it gradually though. No cold turkey with prednisone.

One must remember that THE BIGGEST LOSER people are losing a pound A DAY. These are like olympic athletes of weight loss pushing their bodies to the very limit. Just like very few people should be encouraged to strive for a 3 hour marathon time, people should not be encouraged to this level of weight loss.

Remember also that these people are starting out at morbid obesity, and taking certain risks might be warranted at 400 pounds that are not warranted at 200 pounds.

So I also read that 7 calories x weight with amusement because I weigh 203 pounds as a 6'2 in muscular man and lose weight very slowly by eating  2300 calories per day. The thought of going to 1421 calories is preposterous for me but I also realize that is EXACTLY what I would have to do to play in a game that requires a 7 pound weight loss each week. Remember these people are playing for a $quarter Million.$

For real people, the old standard of never losing more than 2 pounds a week remains valid.

On your original question of any thoughts.

It seems a reasonable approach as long as the BMR adn RMR (which I have never cared for) are specific for YOU rather than a generalization from a website. People's metabolisms can be vastly different.

But yes a 330 calorie deficit should give you a pound every 11 days...about that you caclucled as .3 kg/week. If it DOESN'T give you that result either your BMR estimate was off, you miscounted your calories, or miguessed the amount you were buring as exercise.

I find that there is no substitute for personal experience.

Wine is just another source of calories with one proviso, it's only function is to be burned for heat, but keeping up body temperature is really the main use of calories.

Tight strapping might help but it's going to be trial and error to get it right. It's tough to do decent strength training without hands.

For weight loss though, running, aerobics and cycling (if it doesn't hurt his wrists) all work.

Stay away from bench pressing or any machines that twist the wrist at a goofy painful angle.

It is VERY common for back pain to radiate down the sciatic nerve through the buttocks into the leg...usually oine side only.

So leg pain after back pain points directly to a nerve root pinch where the root comes out of the spine.

Original Post by melkor:

 Read the whole entry, not just the summary snippet from the search function. 

 They're called essential fatty acids because the body can't make them from other fatty acids in your diet.

Firstly, I have no idea what snippet you are referring to.

Secondly, your definition of essential fatty acids is wrong. The definition is:

1. Essential fatty acids, or EFAs, are fatty acids that cannot be constructed within an organism (generally all references are to humans) from other components by any known chemical pathways, and therefore must be obtained from the diet. ...wikipedia

2.any fatty acid required for human metabolism that cannot be synthesized by the body and must be present in the diet...wiktionary

3.A long, fat-containing molecule involved in human body processes that is synthesized by plants but not by the human body...National Institute of Health (NIH)

Your "addition" that it "cannot be made from other fatty acids" is fatuous trying to sneak in that there is a NEED for these other fatty acids. There's not. By definition then these OTHERS would be the essentials if they existed. If that is too philosophical, then just know how easily a whole gamut of fatty acids can be made from proteins and carbohydrates whenever they are in excess. All but the essential fatty acids required in minscule amounts.

Whether or not low fat diets make us fat, greasy, or cause our eyeballs to pop out or whether horrific tasting low fat snack food horrors are developed or whether fat will shorten or lengthen our kives or cure Alzheimer's  is just not germaine.

The ONLY issue is the original poster's question: "Is dietary fat necessary."

The answer remains: only a small amount of essential fatty acids from vegetable or fish sources, probably less than 100 calories worth.

It is the only question I answered in spite of the many siilly straw dog arguments presented.

Original Post by sleepybum:

Hey beautiful friends :-)

I just have a real quick question about dietary fats - I am a little squeamish when it comes to fats: good fats or bad fats. Eating salad, I avoid the dressing. Cooking eggs, I skip the yolk. Cooking in general, I try to microwave.

I'm pretty new to calorie count, and I've been using my counter religiously for the last week. I was a little surprised to see that, while in a typical day I take in around 2000 calories, my total fat intake usually falls between 30-40 g, and almost never goes over 40. According to the analysis, only about 15% of what I eat is in fats.

My question is: Is dietary fats really necessary? If so, am I taking an adequate amount of fat?

And the answer to that question is YES YOU ARE! If you are getting some small amount of poylunsaturated vegetable oils or fish oils.

Those who would like to eat 100,  200, or 300 grams of fat a day can do so without dying from it too quickly and are free to do so but nobody NEEDS to. Ten grams of the right kind of oil will do the trick...smaller people can do with less.

Assuming the body has evolved so  stupidly as to be able to use it's own saturated fats for energy but not be able to use it for "other things" and thus need to eat saturated fat while burning saturated fats indicates no knowledge at all about lipid metabolism.

As for making sure that we maintain 20 or 30% bodyfat...there are many beautiful people who do just fine carving it down to 10% or less.

The body needs to eat saturated fat exactly as much as it needs to eat table sugar...to add calories and for no other reason.

If you have no bodyfat to spare then we might have another issue...paging a bodybuilder with 5% bodyfat and abs you could grate cheese on? Anybody here?

A very popular diet for those with heart disease, perhaps the only diet that has shown reversal of heart disease, is the Ornish diet with ZERO animal fats and an absolute top of 10% of calories from vegetable fats. And the 10% limit is not because of NEED but simply to make some choices palatable. The Ornish diet would even work better at 5 or 2% fat calories. People get WELL avoiding fats, not sick.

Just remember, the body can make copious  fat  EXCEEDINGLY WELL from excess proteins and carbohydrates. Haven't we all noticed that?

If you've gained weight eating between 200o-2200 and LOST weight eating between 1600 and 1800, you've answered your own question. To lose weight eat between 1600 and 1800 calories.

But I think a bodyfat percent at 18-19% is pretty good. What are you striving for?

How can you tell whether you lost lean flesh or bodyfat?

I believe FIRMLY that a calorie IS a calorie for purposes of weight gain and loss.  I firmly believe the equation CALORIES IN = CALORIES OUT + ACCUMULATION

Problem is that some foods generate a craving for more. So things like ice cream, pecans, cashews carrot cake, chocolate will tend to perpetuate a desire for MORE.

Sardines and Campbell's soup , not so much!

Perhaps the only real exception is alcohol which CANNOT be converted to fat. Thus someone on skid row with NO other food could consume 4,000 calories of alcohol and continually lose weight. This approach is NOT recommended just anecdotal. Eat real food in addition to alcohol and the body will use the alcohol to keep up the body temperature and a few other functions and turn most of the the excess REAL FOOD into fat.

GOD BLESS!

The original study seems reasonable to me.

If I ate an equi-caloric diet that was 55% fat for 100 days, I would be logy and uncommunicative...and NAUSEOUS.

A sickening thought...talk about empty calories!

THe original question was "is dietary fat a necessary?"

I directly answered that by saying only a few grams of essential polyunsaturated fatty acid are necessary.

And that is the correct answer.

One's body can make all the other fat it needs (or doesn't) and we are all here because we have made too much fat, or eaten too much fat...it boils down to the same thing.

Anyone who is successfully dieting by restricting calories and eating almost NO fat is STILL on a high fat diet...his OWN fat.

Remembber a 200 pounder with 30% bodyfat is carrying 60 pounds of fat around. THat is 27,240 grams of fat at 9 calories per gram or 245,000 calories. Picture 60 pounds of bacon stapled to a lean man.  He does not NEED to eat another ounce of saturated fat EVER. He may want to; it may be unavoidable; but there is no need. He will not be short of fat for a VERY LONG time.

Fat functions as a water free concentrated source of calories that is accumulated in times of plenty...to be used in times of famine. It serves very little other functions...except for those few grams of essential polyunsaturates which are a biological necessity.

pilgrimdude,

Keep up the good experimental work. I like to operate that way too because there is just too much on the topic of diet that is taken as gospel that is really nonsense. Perhaps the 1,256,870 Diet Books might be somewhat responsible.

Yes, it it INCREDIBLE how quickly the body can pack on the pounds in a short period of profligate eating (and DRINKING.)

A good trick to fool the body out of humger is a nice rounded spoonful of Metamucil in a glass of Crystal Light. A glass of cool clear water or a large piping hot mug of coffee works, but not as well as the stomach filling caloriless fiber.

I'm working on teaching my brain to appreciate the feelings of hunger once a day as a GOOD thing and not something to be feared. After all nobody ever died from missing a meal. For the time being I am putting my long held belief that if I went below 2,000 calories I would get "efficient." My body is responding and I have dropped  a quick 7 pounds in 2 weeks...and stopped tallying the calories as I have done every day since 1998.

But ancillary, I have stopped drinking after about 3 weeks of pouring it down...until Thanksgiving Day anyways. I go on the sauce for a couple weeks perhaps 4 times a year.