Posts by jakinkale

So I think the biggest problem with potatoes comes from the fact that have have a high glycemic index (GI). What this means is that your body is able to digest them very rapidly - actually potatoes can have a similar effect on your blood sugar to candy.

What this tends to mean is that if you eat just potatoes you get hungry soon afterwards as your blood sugar spikes and then dips.

Research on the glycemic index has shown that it's not the individual foods that you need to be worried about, but the GI of the entire meal. So if you combine your potatoes with other low GI foods, then it should reduce the overall GI of your meal, helping with keeping your blood sugar steady.

For more info on GI go to www.glycemicindex.com

It's definitely a matter of letting yourself feel that those foods are included as part of your lifestyle. I think it's switching your mindset from 'good' vs 'bad' foods, to 'everyday' vs 'sometimes' foods. If you allow yourself to have (for example) one snickers a week, then when you eat it, it's not bad, it's allowed, and there's no need to feel guilty. If you think that you're never going to eat a snickers again, then you're probably fooling yourself, and when you do eat it you'll feel like you've failed, and that's where the guilt sets in.

Good work for trying to get in bits of exercise where you can, it's not always easy to fit it in.

It's really hard to go out and order something healthy, especially since we're often in the mindset that a meal out is a treat and so it should be the best thing that we want. I've really struggled with that one, although I'm getting better at it.

I'm not sure that 100 calorie packs are the best idea - depending on what the food is they can just make you hungrier, still it is a good way to control how much you're eating. If you can eat chopped up veggies as a snack they're great, because you can eat a lot of them without having a lot of calories.

I don't know your stats, so I can't say how much you should be eating, but it's probably a good idea to start with what cc reccomends. I eat about 2100 cals on a workout day, or 1700 on a non workout day (workouts are for and hour, and on top of that I walk 2 miles most days to and from work). Here's what I'd usually eat on a non-workout day:

breakfast: 1/3 cup natural muesli, half banana, and strawberries with soy milk, half cup of multi-v juice, cup of tea

morning snack: 25g mixed nuts (about 15 nuts)

lunch: salad or vegetable soup with about 150-200g lean protein

afternoon snack: veggies with hummus or a protein bar

dinner: 150-200g protein with veggies or salad

after dinner: diet yoghurt

Admittedly this is a fairly low carb menu that I've just started recently. Otherwise I would have had a bit less protein at lunch and replaced it with a couple of slices of soy and linseed bread.  And I might have had some rice at dinner.

I think that working out is a great idea, it keeps you fit etc, but I think it'll have a lot more effect if you're eating enough food.

BMR is your basal metabolic rate. It's the number of calories that you would burn in a day if you were in a coma (ie not eating, not moving, not getting excited by anything). 1200 is about the BMR of a 5' ,  100 pound woman who doesn't move around much. So if you're taller or weigh more than that yours will be higher. You should definitely eat at least that 1200/day, probably more. One day or two below that probably won't have too much effect, but any more and you'll start to mess up your metabolism. Deal with feeling too full for a couple of days, after that you'll start to feel hungry again. If you can't eat 1200 cals in a day, it seems that your metabolism might have slowed down already.

There'll probably be a lot of other people along to tell you this same thing... eating too little isn't the best thing to do for your health, or if you want to consistently lose weight. Your body will think that it's going in to a famine and start slowing your metabolism down in order to be able to survive for longer without food. That will generally make it hard for you to lose weight. Also your body will start using your muscles for energy rather than fat stores, as it saves the fat for when it's really needed. It's also difficult to get all of your nutrients in less than 1200 calories/day (especially if some of that is popcorn ;) ).

Do a google search for a harris benedict bmr calculator, and work out bmr - you should probably try to eat at least your bmr each day to keep your body happy and healthy and you'll still lose weight, it might be a little slower, but much healthier
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The truth of this may be debatable, but I've heard that eating foods like avocado and salmon - high in omega3 will help with skin elasticity. Whether that would be able to fix your problem, I'm not sure. My mum also told me that weight watchers used to get you to eat one meal of offal (liver, kdneys etc) a week, which was supposed to help "shrink" you, in terms of keeping your skin taught in the areas that you've lost weight. I can't vouch for it's effectiveness, and it's an old method (think 30 years ago), but it might be worth a try if you don't want the surgery. Although personally I think I'd try the avocado and salmon first.

Different types of food will keep you fuller for longer, so they make it easier to stick within your calorie goals. eg a carrot and some cottage cheese vs a some crackers.

I'm going to disagree with everyone else here to suggest that different foods take different amounts of energy to digest, so two foods with the same calorie content might not have exactly the same effect on your fat stores - HOWEVER, the difference is likely negligible and not really worth worrying about.

You will probably notice an increase on the scales if you've had a very carby day - not because of an increase in fat, but because your body is storing a bit more water. Carbs increase glycogen stores in your cells, which in turn increase water storage - that's why in the first couple of days of a carb free diet you lose a heap of weight. You're basically losing water. In terms of fat storage, there shouldn't be a heap of difference though.

I'd be careful about adding in lots of sugar with drinks like gatorade, although 1 a day probably wouldn't be too harmful. I also don't think that the saturated fat content in whole milk is high enough to be worried about - it's 4% compared with 2%. Big deal. Apparently the whole milk does make it easier for you to absorb calcium though.

Olive oil is generally considered healthy, although you don't want to drown everything in it. Are things like avocado and oily fish (salmon, tuna etc) a possibility to add into his diet? I'd also suggest extra complex carbs, which are a great source of energy. And the nuts. If he has a jar of dried fruit and nuts with him where he studies, he could eat them while he studies.

I went to a seminar from a nutritionist/dietitian last night night. She talked a bit about goal setting, and how to achieve those goals. Really interestingly she asked us to think of an end point where we would have achieved our goal, and imagine what it was like to have the goal - something like waking up in the morning and feeling refreshed instead of tired (as a result of eating healthily and hence getting more sleep), or getting to the 10km mark in a half marathon and feeling like you still have enough energy to finish the extra 2km, or seeing yourself in a pair of size 8 pants.  That imagination was supposed to drive you towards achieving your goal, remind you of how you needed to modify your behaviour to achieve it. Sounds very similar to the "secrect", just without all of the marketing gimmiky stuff.

Interestingly I realised that that was partly what had been missing in my motivation, I'd forgotten to imagine my end goal, and I now feel a lot more motivated for it. Anyway, I thought it was interesting. I've never read the "Secret" but the way that the book is presented is enough to turn me off.

Also, the use of psuedo-science that people have used in explaining the secret really pisses me off. Yes all particles in the universe do vibrate, but you thinking does not make you vibrate in the same way as what you're thinking about, and "car particles" are much the same as say other metal/plastic particles. Show me a journal article where someone who works in molecular physics has proved this, and maybe I'll believe it.

That's my rant :) 

I think red_herring summed it up pretty well. The best way to look for low-cal foods over here is to check the labels, it's time consuming at first, but after you've worked out which things to buy it's not too hard. A lot of them will have the calories in brackets after the kj on the label, so that helps. 

If you're after low cal versions of any particular foods, let me know, I'll see if I can help.  For low-cal flavoured yoghurt, nestle diet is the best, if you want one that has no sugar or artificial sweetener jalna is a good brand and so is paris creek. Nestle diet has a range of low-cal dairy type desserts as well which are pretty good.

I tend to buy burgen soy and linseed bread. It's not low cal (about 100cal/slice), but it's really filling, I find it difficult to manage two slices at once. The burgen range is all low GI, meaning that it is digested slowly and keeps you fuller for longer. Low GI foods are a good choice health-wise, they'll make you want to eat less, just make sure you check how many cals are in them.

So yeah, any questions, feel free to message me, I'm happy to advise. I haven't used calorie king much, but after red_herring's post, I think I might have a look at it :) 

I wish people would be careful about posting answers to things sometimes. The links that Saltspringer posted to the BMR calculator are the right ones to use.

Remember that your BMR is how many calories you would burn if you were practically in a coma, all the little things you do each day add up to increase your calorie burn eg eating, brushing your teeth, walking to the toilet etc. So even someone who does very little activity uses more calories than their BMR. 

I'm similar to you, 5'8, weigh a little less, and exercise a similar amount. I need to eat around 1800 to lose weight, if I eat much less than that my weight loss stalls. I'd recommend trying a similar amount for yourself (1700-1900) and see how you go.

Good luck. 

It's funny, I have friends who I tend to eat more around, and who I make poor choices when I'm with. I tend to get frustrated with myself for the choices instead though. It's good that you've realised the choice is there to make. I find the hardest thing is remembering to make the right choice, rather than just going along with the wrong one. 

Another alternative next time a friend wants to take you to lunch, is to insist on going somewhere healthy, or with healthy options - that way you still get your lunch and the company, but without the negative health effects.  

You guys are lucky, when I tried to do it, it was the 40 hour famine. I lasted 17.5 hours. Not very long, but I think I was only 12 years old, and it was the weekend.

Good luck, I do think you should be careful if you're getting dizzy from not eating, and if you do feel really bad, it's probably worth stopping the famine. When we did it we were sponsored per hour, so even though I gave in part way through, I still raised some of the money for charity.