On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:31:09 -0400, wrote:

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To lose weight you must reduce the number of calories you consume.
Exercising is great and fun and should be done too. But you have to
reduce the calories you consume to lose weight. You have to run
roughly a 3,500 calorie deficit to lose 1 pound. So to lose 1 pound a
week, you have to eat 500 fewer calories a day than you burn. I think
a Big Mac has a bit over 500 calories. So for lunch you could skip the
Big Mac and just eat the french fries, and diet Coke.

My vote mould be to skip the fries, and opt for something like a Big
mac hold the cheese and hold the sauce. These two ingredients are
calorie packed and don't contribute to your feeling of fullness too
much. Just unecessary excess. The fries IMO are the worst choice. They
are almost as many calories as the big mac, lots of fats, and high GI
carbs, essentially zero protein.

They also are fried in trans-fat containing oil (typically), and
trans-fats are very, very bad.

I'm sure what types of food have some impact on weight loss. Maybe
eating all fat or all protein or all carbohydrates matters some. But a
balanced diet of healtyhy foods is probalby best for most people. And
in the end no matter what types of calories you consume, the key aspect
is eating fewer calories than you burn. You also have to stay on your
diet/meal plan forever to keep the weight off. Reducing weight
permanently involves a permanent lifestyle change. A permanent change
in your eating habits.

Indeed permanent lifestyle changes and an all-arounbd healthy diet are
the ideal. But it is also important find an acheivable balance where
you phase in these changes. Otherwise you end up falling off the wagon
too much and not getting anywhere. The main idea behind the low-carb
diets is that most carbs are absorbed into the blood faster than they
can be used up, so the body quickly converts the excess into fat before
you have even had a chance to use them. So a cookie binge adds lots of
calories to your system, but since a large number of them get converted
to fat right away, you get hungry again soon, and have more cookies. A
diet with lower carbs takes longer to digest and is available for
energy over a longer time, so the body doesn't convert as much of it to
fat right away. So the satiated feeling lasts longer and the craving
for sweets goes away which in turn makes it easier to achieve healthy
diet changes.

One of the problems people facing weight loss issues is that the
prospect of huge life-long changes to the diet is daunting and seems
insurmaountable. For me the trick was to take it step by step in small
increments. My diet today is quite healthy, and a far cry from my
heaviest period, but I could not have just gone "cold turkey" to my
current diet. Phasing into it is what has made it approachable.

Good luck!

Joseph


I'm on a low carb diet and have been for quite a while. Low carb doesn't
mean "no carb" -- you can still eat fruits and vegetables. You just don't
eat breads (except rarely, of course), desserts, rice, pasta, etc. Today,
I rode 17 miles (my "easy" ride -- not because of the distance but because
of the relative lack of hills) and had eggs, bacon, fruit, raw vegetables,
and sandwiches (w/low carb tortillas).

Bob

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