A friend asked about the different diets I have been on and my opinions on them. I thought it sounded like a good idea for a post so here goes. (I just finished and was surprised at how long it was, so just be aware it’s not a short post)
As is the case with most obese people I have tried a lot of different diets, some good, and some bad. Some I tried for months and had quite a bit of success, others only lasted a few weeks before deciding they were not for me, and at least one barely made it out of the box. So in no particular order…
I’ll start with the one that barely made it out of the box. Michael Thurmond’s six week body makeover, in fairness I really didn’t give this one a fair try. Their big selling point is that it is a program is that it is supposed to be custom tailored to fit your exact body part. Sounds pretty cool, right, you can target the areas that need the most help, or somehow address your eating issue so that in their words you can “Eat more, exercise less, and still lose weight.” So, I don’t really know exactly what I was expecting but it was basically these cards with upper, middle, and lower body sections on them and sort of small, medium, or large. Once finding your body type they had a diet plan for you, in my case since I was pretty much big everywhere it focused…on everything. I probably should have at least tried it but thought at the time it was a letdown , didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know and I just lost interest in it almost from the get go. The only cool part was it also included an exercise program with big rubber resistance bands that I have actually used quite a bit.
Next on the list is Jared’s “Subway diet”, you all know the drill, six inch sub with no fattening things on it for lunch same for dinner plus a bag of baked Lay’s. I think if you could stay on this one it would probably work for you, as long as you exercise with it. I could not do this one, within about 3 weeks I was so burnt out on having subway all the time and being limited to their “6 grams of fat or less” subs that when I stopped I didn’t go back to Subway for about 6 months and avoided all of the “6 grams” variety sub until a couple of weeks ago (about 8 years).
I tried Slim-Fast for about 2 weeks; this one didn’t work for me because for some reason the shakes made me sick. I thought the shakes actually tasted pretty good but I think I would have become bored with it pretty quick had they not made me sick.
I’ve noticed a pattern here, I said earlier “in no particular order”, but so far it has been the diets that worked the least for me…oh well. I’ll go to one that worked pretty well for me, Atkins.
Atkins worked really well for me, at first, but I think it has a flaw. I am your stereotypical “steak and potatoes” carnivore, and really I can pretty much drop the potatoes with little or no problem and just be a carnivore. I think I can safely say that I will never adopt the vegan lifestyle because my 2 favorite food groups are meat and dairy. This is also a bad combo for the traditional diet but for Atkins it was great. No pasta, no rice, no potatoes, and no bread. What does that leave, some fruits and veggies but lots of meat and cheese. It was great…bacon double cheeseburger, 2-3 carbs, sure why not…big ribeye steak, ok…sausages, sure give me 3 and forget the bun…you could even go to Carl’s Jr. and get a bug juicy, messy burger wrapped in lettuce, it was great. And I did lose weight, about 50 pounds, but…there was a problem, after a few months I started having cravings for food high in carbs, at first I could handle them and on occasion try and have a really low carb day so I could have more carbs at night, eventually the cravings got worse and I crumbled. In the back of my mind I also constantly fought with the idea that I was losing weight but ingesting massive amounts of fat and figured in the long run that couldn’t be good for me. I know that the Atkins diet and some other ‘low carb, high protein” diets have been modified to take into account “good carbs” and “bad carbs”, I haven’t tried this one but I imagine it is a lot more balances and not so meat and dairy centric and probably better for you than the original version.
Next on my list I am gonna combine 2 diets and that is Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers. These are both well known diets and probably the most used diets in the world. I actually like a lot about both programs, I like that they both focus on accountability and needing the support of others to succeed. I also like the idea of the Weight Watchers points system, it’s essentially calorie counting but simplified to smaller numbers and easier to track. My problem with these were more accountable to timing and how I viewed the image of these diets at the time, I was going to the meetings or weigh-ins with my mom and when I would go not only was I the only teenager there most of the time but was also the only male and it made it uncomfortable for me. I think now with all the online tools and services, it would be easier for me but I am convinces that even then I wouldn’t stay on them long enough to attain my goal.
I have tried several different diet pills (Metabolife, Hydroxycut, Apex Fat burner 2, Leptopril), none of them really worked for me…or they worked but had unpleasant side effects. Diet pills come in basically 3 forms appetite suppression, metabolism booster, and fat absorption inhibitors (these are the ones with unpleasant side effects). If these pills worked as good as they claim we could wipe out obesity, but they don’t, probably the most effective is the variety that limit the amount of fat you absorb (I haven’t tried Alli, but that is how it works too), the problem is if the fat is not being absorbed it has to be removed from your body somehow and it does (use your imagination).
My last one here I will address is the tried and true, plain and simple, straight forward “cut calories and work out” method, I have done this one both on my own and at one time under a doctor’s care. This one is easy to understand but hard to do, decrease you calorie intake and increase your calories burned thru exercise to a point where you burn more than you take in and you lose weight. As long as you have the discipline to go to the gym a few times a week and count all those calories this one does work. This one used to be a lot harder, you would have to carry a book that showed the calories and record them in a notebook. Now days with technology and smartphones it’s a lot easier, I even have a calorie counting program on my phone that has a barcode reader, a huge database of food and excercises, does all the math and since I am under a nutritionists care leading up to the surgery I can even share my food diary with her with this program (MyFitnessPal.com)
So, which would I recommend…we’ll if your situation is similar to mine…none of them. The fact of the matter is that none of these are really designed for me or people who have a lot to lose (I would call a lot 80 pounds or more). Statistically, none of them work long term. One study found that for the morbidly obese, regardless of what type of diet they try less than 10% get down to their goal weight, and regardless of how much they may have initially lost 95-98% had gained it all back and usually more after 5 years. If however you need to lose 50 – 60 pounds or less, my advice and recommendation would be the “cut calories and exercise” method, this one will not only help you lose the weight but also get more healthy in general.
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