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The thing is, you don't have to do any type of "program" to lose weight. Just change to healthier eating, and count your calories. Myfitnesspal.com is a great resource; it calculates how many calories you need to consume each day to lose weight at the rate you want. It has the tools you need to log your calories, as well as a database of foods and the calories contained in them. Their smartphone app has a barcode scanner you can use to automatically enter certain foods. You can even enter your own recipes, and it will calculate the calories for you.
I eat anything I want. I've chosen to stop drinking sodas and fruit juices, because I would rather eat my calories than drink them. I usually skip pasta, because I'd rather save the calories for something else. I love to cook, so that helps. (Cooking Light magazine is a great resource for recipes.) I go out to eat about once a month, and pretty much eat what I want for that meal. My most frequent snacks are apples and pistachios, but I do have ice cream a few times per week. I don't deprive myself. For instance, my husband loves the cinnamon rolls at Whole Foods, and I bring one home for him every Friday when I go shopping. I love them, too, and just a bite of his is enough to satisfy me.
The key is that I've changed the way I'm eating, permanently, and I don't deprive myself. This isn't some temporary thing. I love the food I eat, and feel so much better. I don't want to stop when I reach my goal weight. Sure, there are things I won't eat now that I will probably treat myself to now and then when I've reach goal (such as an entire cinnamon roll vs just a bite), but I'm not going to start gorging myself on everything in site.
When it comes to weight, exclusively, a calorie is a calorie. When it comes to health, a calorie is only marginally important. When it comes to healthy weight loss, a calorie is most definitely not simply a calorie. A calorie of fat, will affect your metabolism, your heart, your arteries, your lungs, your kidneys, your liver, pancreas, and skin, much differently than a calorie of sugar. And either of those will affect all of those much differently than a calorie of starch, and yet again much differently than protein.
If you want to care JUST about calories, and nothing else, then stop eating entirely. Just don't eat anything at all. You WILL lose weight. You'll also get very sick, and die if no one forces food into your body, but that's what happens when you only focus on calories.
If you want to be healthy AND lose weight, you'll eat healthy foods, in moderate portions, and splurge only occasionally in small doses. Five bites of ice cream every day will make you lose weight, but it will also make you sick. Five bites of filet mignon every day will also make you sick, AND you'll lose weight. Five bites of bean burritos with nothing else all day will make you lose weight, and make you sick. Five bites of salad will make you lose weight, and make you sick.
Or, you can eat a 4-ounce fillet mignon, no matter how many bites it is, with a wilted spinach salad topped with crumbled bleu cheese, chopped pecans, and a raspberry vinaigrette, no matter how many bites it is, and still be able to eat a half-cup of home-made oatmeal with raisins and cinnamon and a dash of maple syrup for breakfast, and STILL lose weight, and STILL be able to enjoy a 4-ounce cup of yogurt with 4 sliced strawberries in it for a lunchtime snack.
If you actually get up from the table between meals and manage to walk a couple of miles throughout the day, you could probably even add in half a baked potato with that dinner, and even splurge on a pat of butter.
And STILL lose weight.
If you're going to limit yourself to 5 bites, don't bother eating at all. You'll lose it much faster. You'll get sick and die, but hey who cares, when you're beating the odds and keeping the calories down right?
Thanks for the thoughts I am considering them. I never ate only 10 bites more like 30 and with working out 5 times a week I was still losing almost a pound a day.
I will give my fitness pal another look. If money wasn't an issue I would probably eat ediets dot com or nutrasystem. Both have great looking small portions but $$.
Don't even think about Nutrisystem. I did it years ago. The food tastes like crap. I lost 30 lbs., then got so tired of eating their crappy food, I stopped. I went out to eat, and promptly got very sick.
Here's the thing: You need to get out of the mind set that you need to eat special food or use gimmicky diets to lose weight. You don't. You need to eat normal, healthy food. Special foods and restrictive diets are not sustainable in the long term.
Once I realized I didn't have to do without all the foods I love in order to lose weight, it became easy. I also learned to love foods that are good for me. Once I learned to weigh my foods and practice portion control, I no longer wanted huge portions of food.
Lunch: Sandwich consisting of 2 slices homemade sourdough bread, Boar's Head London Broil roast beef, and mayo, plus an orange
Dinner: Pork tenderloin, roasted potatoes and carrots
Snacks: 1 apple, 1 orange, 1/3 cup pistachios
Total calories for the day: 1,337
I'm rarely hungry, because I eat a lot of protein. On the weekends, I sometimes like to have higher-calorie dinner, so I eat a light brunch, and save my calorie allowance for dinner.
Interesting Claire I am one of those that if I don't get a decent amount of carbs I can't sleep, hell I have insomnia anyway. I actually feel better when I eat carbs. It would take 4 boneless chicken breasts for me to fill up on protein. On Atkins I was only sleeping about 3 hours a night once off I went back to 7.
I only mentioned ediets and nutrasystem because the meals looked balanced, tasty, and small portion.
Your meal plan looks interesting. For me, what has worked the best is small and tasty. If I eat something and I don't like it spit it out why waste the calories. I read some articles about how the French eat small and tasty sometimes with heavy cream and they aren't obese.
I would probably drop the breakfast calories and save up for a small bowl of Dreyer's light for desert. I have no vices save food so it's one of my pleasures. I actually have conditioned myself to not eat breakfast and I am fine. Just give me some caffeine and I am good til noon. The ice cream is not only tasty it ensures I eat enough at night and get my sleep because tired and hungry makes for a grumpy bear LOL. On my days when I am really good I think on my modified 5 bite I eat about 1500 cal. I really should drop the 5 bite title as it's nothing more than portion control keeping cal to around 1500 and workout 20-30 min.
It's weird but many times I can actually go until mid afternoon without eating but I can't sleep on an empty stomach. Strange I know. I work out better too on an empty stomach.
My carb allowance is 193 grams per day. (It varies from person to person, and MFP calculates it for you.) I rarely go over it. However, I don't usually have to pay much attention to it; as long as I stay under my calorie allowance, it's no problem staying under my carb allowance.
With MFP, you can eat as frequently or infrequently as you like, and whatever you like. It's really up to you, and what works best for you. You enter your weight, age, activity level, and how much you want to lose per week, and it makes the calculations for you. It adjusts your allowances as you lose weight. I started out with much higher allowances (I think my original calorie allowance was 1,700 or 1,800), then it adjusted downward as I lost weight. My calorie allowance is now 1,400 per day, if I don't exercise. If I exercise, I can have more.
Once you start losing weight, it will take less food to fill you up.
I have had weight issues all my life. I have done every diet over my 43 years and 5 bite is the only one that worked because you can eat whatever you want, but you only get 5 bites twice a day. I lost 40 pounds in 2 months and I was eating more like 20-30 bites a day, but I exercise 3-5 times a week and have lean muscle. I did gain 10 pounds back but hey honestly I am a stress eater its one of my few vices.
You know why I know it works. Even my brother a 10 year physical trainer said nutrition is more important than exercise. Even when I think about the first time about 20 years ago I shed 80 pounds it was due to strict calorie intact or portion control combined with exercise. I kept that 80 pounds off for 10 years and then entered the corp. world and gained it all back over time.
When I first heard about gastric bypass I said I am only 50 pounds overweight. It was a horirble time in my life I was stress eating my Mom was on her deathbed, better now, but I watched so many darn episodes of morbidly obese people on TLC a few years back I noticed something. Lapband whatever you want to call it works! They had this guy eating 2 peices of pizza a day after lap band and lost 300 pounds eating pizza. Forget Atkins it just gave me insomnia, I need carbs to live. I like ice cream and junk food, so why try and hide it. The only other decent plain I have seen is South Beach or Zone, Nutrasystem will leave you bankrupt same with Jenny Craig from talking to people.
All those other diets fail because you can't stand eating the same crap after 2-3 months or doing the same hard core workouts you get burned out.
5 bite is brutal the first few days, your stomach is shrinking, but then you get used to it, the real power for me is when my appetite is shrunk way down and then I exercise I have dropped 2 pounds in day and kept losing.
I was just browsing forums on this board and ran accross this and thought I would share.
Dr Alan C Lewis " Why Weight Around" or Slimming Station dot com.
Lastly, be really picky about what you eat since you ain't going to be eating much. The French eat small portions with cream and butter and they don't have our obesity rates. And as a bonus you will save a ton of money.
Interesting. I googled "five bite diet" because I saw a promotion for Dr. Oz' show today about it and I'd never heard of it. Don't get me started on Dr. Oz - I used to like him when he visited Oprah's show but now he promotes anything and everything so I don't really trust him anymore.
But I do agree that a very low calorie diet is pretty much what gastric bypass patients are on, so if you can do the same thing without bypass, to me that is better than staying overweight - although I'm sure that there are times that bypass patients WOULD eat more if they could and the only reason they lose weight is that they physically cannot eat more.
What has always worked for me is not eating very much. I did that naturally as a kid because I was too busy to think about eating. It was an annoyance to have to stop to eat when I had other things I wanted to do! I grew out of that and went through a period where I liked to cook and try new things (anyone remember the Galloping Gourmet? I used to watch that when I was 12 or 13 and got interested in food then). I quickly realized that there had to be a limit; that I couldn't just eat as much as I wanted to eat!
I did very well through the years by not following a diet, but simply limiting the amount of food I allowed myself to have. With each pregnancy I gained weight, but lost it after. It was later that I gained weight when I allowed myself to eat more than I used to allow, plus I'm sure my metabolism has slowed down with age. So I need to get down to the "normal me" weight. The five bite diet made me think of all this. I probably will eat more than five bites but will go back to being conscious of how much I am eating and limit it like I've done pretty much all my life other than pregnancy and after menopause!
he's obsessed with being as "skinny" as possible and eating as little as possible.
hmm does that sound like any condition we can think of? What a horrible disorder to try to spread to other people.
Well, he is a MD. It sounded like his main reason for developing and following the diet is his belief that skinny people live a lot longer.
Screw that, I like eating too much to starve myself.
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but will go back to being conscious of how much I am eating and limit it like I've done pretty much all my life other than pregnancy and after menopause!
