If someone has mastered the art of low-fat sensible eating

without feeling like gnawing your own arm off by 3:00 p.m., I'd like to know how.

Seriously. I've lost 125 pounds since January of 2002 through a low-cal, low-fat diet and exercise.

You have to space your calories out throughout the day. Recently I've been doing turkey bacon on a slide of low-cal bread for breakfast. One of the myriad of low-cal frozen entrees for lunch. Fruit about 3 in the afternoon. And something sensible for dinner. I do havve to eat around 3 but that's pretty normal I think.

Do it. Force yourself to drink it. Make sure it's always ice cold.

You will be peeing 10-15 times a day. But you will always be too full to overeat.

Oh yeah, always drink at least one 24 oz. bottle before meals.

I lost 50 lbs last summer this way. I was amazed at how easy it was. This coming from a guy whose been overweight his entire life.

I also used some diet software that really kicked butt.

it makes a huge diffrence, not just keeping you full, but hydration is also so important and most people tend to not drink enough water.

As for the diet software, what did you do? Reformat your metabolism? :evilgrin: If only it was that easy!

You can make yourself pretty sick this way. You can flush a lot of minerals out of your body. I ended up with a magnesium deficiency at one point, and it was probably from too much water.

Eat carbohydrates early in the day. Cereal when you wake up; a sandwich for lunch etc.

After 6 PM, no carbs at all (or as little as possible). Eat fish or chicken with no sauce, tofu etc. Emphasis on protiens.

If you're really strict in the evening, it's bearable if you go ahead and have tastier stuff earlier in the day.

And I concur about the water. Lots of water.

...and doing a half-hour of medium cardio workout per day.

it's not a natural part of the human diet...we are by nature hunter-gatherers.

ELIMINATE starch from your diet(and if you can kick refined sugar as well it helps A LOT) and the pounds will melt off in a very short time.

also- read labels...modified food starch should be avoided as well.

if you want a buzz, smoke a joint.
alcohol is fattening.

smoking weed is fat free!

cut your dietary intake by 1/2 preferably, or at least 1/3.
slow down at meals, and concentrate on the flavor, texture of the food you are eating - you'll fill up sooner.
let your stomach tell you you're full, not your mind.
Eat a small snack (fruit, veggie, yogurt, etc) btwn meals on a regular basis.
Take back your diet into your own hands, and out of the restaurant mindset. Bigger is not better, but costs a lot more.
Take your time to adjust to smaller quantities, but get used to it. You'll live a longer life due to it, and will have plenty of years to enjoy the food along the way.
Probably save money and time to boot.

dp

I tried low fat dieting for years and wound up always starving and eventually gaining it all back. And drinking gallons of water a day is dangerous - water intoxication (hyponatremia) - check it out on google. Water never worked for me anyway.

I am losing 1-2 pounds a week now quite easily and without one single pang of hunger - I cut out regular bread, all sugar, and most starches. I eat as much as I want of everything else. Everyone is different, I guess, but fat is the food group that satisfies hunger most, then comes protein, and then complex carbs, and then last, refined carbohydrates. I can eat this way forever. I find moderate good fats (olive oil, nuts), moderate protein, moderate complex carbohydrates, and no refined carbohydrates the way to go.

Edit to add word

and I've lost 25 pounds in 8 weeks. :D

Dannon Lo-fat plain yogurt (it strains the best)- I put a paper coffee filter into a strainer, plop a big tub of yogurt in there, and let it drain for hours. Stir occasionally. Drain it till it's the consistency of sour cream (usually have about 1/2 the volume remaining). Use this in dips, casseroles, etc. It makes you feel like you're having something rich and creamy without the fat.

That's just my little tip to go with everyone else's big tips.

I haven't made it in a long time. You can make a yummy desert with it by adding Splenda and any flavorings you want. It is the richest yogurt you can imagine and you can make it fat free AND sugar free. It's also good straight on baked potatoes or used like sour cream in any recipe.

I like to eat meat, fruit, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, milk, etc. and avoid sweets like doughnuts, cookies, etc. but chocolate is fine.

have a piece of bread, small chunk of cheese and an apple for lunch. Do not drink any soft drinks even (ESPECIALLY, actually) diet during the day. Then eat and drink whatever you want for dinner. That's my system.

non fat yogurt
non fat milk
frozen fruit (strawberries work well)
A few packets of splenda
cinnamon

mix together in a blender. It feels like a milk shake but is very healthy and filling.

This is assuming that what you want is a variety of foods, including fruits and vegetables, and not Hostess ring dings all the time.

It's called Topamax, and it's a migraine medication my doctor has me on.

Apparently, it also works on impulse control and now I hardly eat a thing. I get hungry, but after eating a small amount, I get full quickly. I have completely lost the desire to binge. It's very strange.

for me it's that simple.

I never believe it, but now I pour it on cereal and gulp it down almost as if it were real milk.

be just fine... somehow that whole cuppa tea thing is very soothing and fulfilling.

You NEED to snack, so just eat healthy snacks. It's important to keep food in the tummy, just make it good food.

I've lost almost 10 lbs in the past 3 weeks with good food and exercising 3 days a week.

20 more to go.

On NO diet.

Eat less, exercise more. Eschew fat of all kinds. IGNORE Atkins...it is NOT sustainable.

Change your life. Really. Whatever it is, change it. You CANNOT get thin if you continue to love big dinner plates, Bloomin' Onions, Fribbles. Like sex, the really, really fun stuff is probably bad for you. Start looking at food differently. Alcohol, too. I stopped drinking first, just for a week or two, like all serious drinkers do from time to time. But when I did, I started dropping weight like crazy. So I decided to abstain a little longer. I like the feeling of being 15-20 lighter, so I started doing some exercise, too.

Mostly, though, I viewed eating fat the way I view eating red meat or smoking cigarettes...I avoid them because they are bad. Fat is, too. When you get this mental picture in your head about what fat is, and what it does to you, you can start avoiding it like the plague.

Stop longing for your favorite old foods, and think of them as the trojan horses trying to kill you. Don't eat a veggie burger thinking it will taste like a Whopper. It will taste good, but it will NOT be a Whopper. Deal with it. You'll live longer, you'll look better, you'll feel better...and it is much easier to avoid aspects of the corporate grid when you are trying to eat healthy, because so few corporate restaurants cater to the health concscious.

Once you've reached a target weight, you can start eating "normal" food again. But you won't want to eat it...you'll be grossed out by fat. And your new life as a person who can bend over and tie shoes, walk up three flights of stairs without looking for a defibulator...it is all worth it.

Eating a Whopper is worth nothing.

I've gone on really low-fat diets twice and lost a ton of weight in a hurry. But when I reached my goal and started eating a less-restrictive diet, I gained it all back. Fat tastes good. It makes other stuff taste good. I ate a vegan diet for three months once, and by the end of it I was dying for a deep-fried chicken patty on white bread with mayo. So I got one, and it was the best damn thing I'd ever tasted. And that was the end of the vegan diet. :) And the end of being skinny. I think you have to change your lifestyle to something you can sustain for the rest of your life. If you look at your diet as temporary, you're likely to gain back all the weight you lose once the diet is over. It's good that you're grossed out by fat now, but I don't think it works that way for most people.

"I think you have to change your lifestyle to something you can sustain for the rest of your life. If you look at your diet as temporary, you're likely to gain back all the weight you lose once the diet is over."

My point exactly. I haven't stayed off fat forever. But it's been over four years now, and my weight hasn't varied more than five pounds since. Now I can eat ice cream, or have pizza and all that. But as a lifestyle...I have not been to a McDonalds in five years, I don't order a plate of chicken wings and fries for lunch...I LOVE wings and fries! -- but now just the taste of all the grease and fat just makes me FEEL like I'm getting fat again. That's why the lifestyle part is key. You can't think "I'll lose thirty pounds then get back to eating cake and chicken wings again!" because you'll be doomed. Just saying "I don't like cake" because it isn't true, and you'll just feel like you're missing out (like you and your deep fried chicken patty). So you need to reeducate yourself, as part of a lifestyle change. Stop thinking that fat is okay. Eat fat, get fat. Eat seemed, for me anyway, to make it MUCH easier to eschew the fat if it grossed me out. Now, it still does...so I can eat a few fries and be perfectly happy instead of wanting a Supersize.

knee that showed globs of FAT around my knee, that finished grossing me out and sent my fatty little knees and ass to the GYM 3 times a week.

That 3-D effect of globs of fat made a lasting impression.

YECK.

although i didn't know i was doing atkin's at the time-
i just decided to cut out starch from my diet, because it had been determined that it was at the root cause of my spinal condition- ankylosing spondylitis.

by cutting out starch (which is mainly what atkins is about?), the pounds melted off.
starch and refined sugar are not natural parts of the human diet- breads, cakes, pasta, cookies, etc... cut it out and get thin.

this makes the most LOGICAL sense.

All other foods, such as breads, processed foods, in extreme moderation.

a low fat healthy pizza. I use portabella mushroom caps as the dough, lowfat cheese, garlic, and onions.

Wheat pasta, poultry, fish, rice, wine, water, salads, fruit, juice, Clif bars.

'Low-fat' isn't entirely necessary. I probably have around 37g or so per day, mostly in the form of olive oil. What you want to avoid is:

Soda
Meat
White bread
Sugar in all forms
Saturated fat (as much as possible)

Then base the rest of your diet on healthy grains, vegetables and some fruit and you'll be good. I have poultry or fish once a day as well.

Use non-stick cookware and cut back on the oil you use to saute with. I used to just pour the oil in the pan til it looked like enough. Now I measure it and use a teaspoon only. In fact, measure everything, you may be surprised at how much (or little) you are eating at a serving.

Switch to low fat or fat-free products and read the labels to count the fat grams through the day. Skim milk was easy to get used to even after using 2% for decades. Trader Joe's recently started selling a great low fat sharp cheddar cheese called Ol'Bitey. It's the first low fat cheese I have tried that tastes good and melts.

I try to limit the fat grams to less than 30 per day. I also drink a lot of ice water throughout the day.

Basically, you just have to eat all the time if you are on an extreme low-fat diet like Pritikin or Ornish. If you are involved in activities where you can't constantly be eating celery sticks, salads, etc. but rather you have to keep your hands free, I don't think you can stick with an extremely low fat diet. I now eat a more moderate diet and I am still at my correct weight so I suspect all the angst was a waste of time anyway. You're at the weight your genetics, medication load, Prozac in your city water, or what-have-you causes you to weigh. Be that as it may, there is no getting around eating a lot of raw carrots and bell peppers. When they talk about eating six small meals a day, they are serious when they say six meals a day -- maybe not so serious about the "small" part. The fiber will fill you up but it doesn't stick with you, if you know what I mean.

Sorry. Like I said, I was 120 pounds with or without the low fat diet. I no longer put any serious credence in the calorie myth.

I just ate a 4 oz package of peanuts.

Nutritional Info:

680 calories
total fat: 84% of the daily recommended
Vitamin A: 0%
Vitamin C: 0%
Calcium : 0%
Iron : 8%

man oh man oh man. (wish I had another package!)

But that's the 10 lbs. I gained over the holidays.

I'm on this new medication that takes away your appetite. I gained 40 lbs. in high school from a medication that increased my appetite severely. Now I guess God is repaying me for that.

If I never took that medication, I wouldn't even be 10 lbs. overweight. But I'm still 35-40 lbs. overweight.

Yes I know that's not what the OP was about, but...

A lot of the low-carb theories make sense to me. Getting rid of processed white flour and sugar, etc. The one part I don't understand is rice. If white rice is so bad because it's a processed carb, why are the Japanese (to name just one nationality) so healthy when their diet has white rice as its foundation?

Same in the rest of Asia. White rice was fetishized because only the wealthy could afford it. Why did the wealthy eat it? Because they could also afford meat, so that's where they got all their nutrients, protein, and strength. White rice was a pleasantly-textured, but calorically empty, accompaniment, light and fluffy, to balance the heaviness of flesh.

Health is decaying in Asia with the rise of processed foods, just as in the rest of the world. Look into the macrobiotic diet, learn the real foundation of health.

tiny moths around my house for months, they came from a package of brown rice.

by using and replacing them regularly! A helpful hint from your resident natural foods cook. :)

For health reasons, I had to start a low-fat diet, and so I read labels religiously and read up a bit on different types of fats. I freaked out for a while and was nervous about eating anything that had more than a few grams of fat in it.

On top of that, the first few weeks, I felt hungry a good deal of the time.

But without my having to count calories, the weight came off. Losing weight wasn't my objective (improving my health was), but it was an added bonus.

Now I'm not so nervous about fat content, but I do try to limit my daily fat intake and balance things out (i.e., eat an especially low-fat dinner after eating a slice of someone's birthday cake at the office).

Your best bet is to talk to a health care professional who can explain the principles behind low-fat eating and give you some materials on it. There are also lots of cookbooks out that have lower-fat versions of favorite recipes. I've been using several different ones, including "MealLeaniYum," which includes kosher recipes and a lot of suggestions for holiday meals.