Diet Food: Could it Be Making You Fat?

Because an overweight person is probably craving certain foods more than someone who is not trying to lose weight. And ‘low-fat’ is an opportunity to indulge with less guilt.

I've been dieting for the last two months on a 1500 calorie per day diet. One thing I've realized on this budget is that life is too short for bad food! If I'm only going to eat a little, then I should eat the best stuff I can "afford". So I steer clear of diet foods and go with natural foods, figuring out what gives me the most nutrition and taste for my calories. When I eat, I'm typically fairly hungry, so good food tastes all that much better.

True, there are some foods I really can't eat now. As much as I love egg nog, it's just to calorie-laden but nutritionally empty to be worth it.

These ad-men and women are BRILLIANT!! They found a way to put the word SKINNY on the package. Brilliant!! Now, how can we find a way to get these brilliant people doing something that will help the world?

Yeah, well, I will eat the whole bag as bedding for a pound of ground beef (corn stack), and turn it into more muscle.

It must suck to be skinny-fat, having to psychologically beat oneself like a "bad monkey", in order to put down the chips and stay thin. Yeah, I remember those days...

Is the common person's dilemma really a lack of discipline, or a lack of muscle (and therefore, metabolism)? Can we create a ready, easy education, for people to develop both?

Calories still matter. I regained a lot of weight and more when I went on the fat free craze. I know have to journal my food and I can eat low fat food but it still counts.

This is an example of the mantras we've been had. Surely, if you go low fat, you are going to eat more carbs. If you lay off on the carbs, you are going to eat more fat and protein.

Seems that the way to stay healthy is to not go on low fat diets when you are overweight. In fact, don't go on low fat diets at all. Next off is the Saturated Fat-free craze. Fokes, Going on ultra low saturated fat diets (i.e. 2 grams of saturated fats a day) is just as bad as high-saturated fat diets. Fat is important to us. Monousatrated fats allow for vitamins E and K absorption, and vitamin A precursers. Polyunsaturated fats is an essential fatty acid for the building blocks. Make sure you consume omeag 3 and omega 6 fatty acids as near equal as possible. Many Americans are consumeing too much omega 6s and not enough 3s. Saturated fats, though they raise cholesterol (too much clogs arteries), is essential for vitamin A and D absorption, as well as cell membrane function and is a food for the brain.

Now comes trans fats. Some are good, most are bad for you. The good trans fats come from meat and dairy products. We also discovered that our body does manufacture trans fats. However, these good trans fats arn't the same as the trans fats from hydrogenated oils. Hydrogenated trans fats are the bad ones that clog up arteries, blocks vitamin absorption, scraps omega 3 fatty acids from your bloodstream, and raises the risk for diabetes, altimers, liu gherig's disease, and other nerological diseases.

So, Just remember during the holidays: Have everything on the buffet table, control your portions, and stay away from trans fats, fried foods, or commercial baked goods. If you want a brownie or a cookie square, than take the homemade one that's made from somebody who brought it in. That will less likely to contain trans fats. If you want to cook brownies, use butter or coconut oil (or even some whole foods sell non-hydrogenated shortenings). Stay away from that crisco junk or these cheap junk oils when cooking. The real source of health problems are the trans fats and refined carbohydrates.

Really, in the end, this shouldn't matter, because if you weight yourself every day, you'll see when you start gaining and stop eating as much. If you still gain, you'll cut back more. I don't think anyone can complain that they're being tricked: just know your weight at all times.

Mark said:
Really, in the end, this shouldn't matter, because if you weight yourself every day, you'll see when you start gaining and stop eating as much. If you still gain, you'll cut back more. I don't think anyone can complain that they're being tricked: just know your weight at all times.[...]

I have to disagree at least slightly, although I agree with the general premise. How your clothes fit is a much better indication than weight. If you start lifting weights, you will gain muscle weight but not necessarily a lot of mass, so you might be upset that you were gaining weight but really it would be healthy muscle, not fat.
Also, if one has young daughters, weighing yourself where they can see you or weighing them every day can lead to a greater likelihood of an eating disorder. I can't remember where I read this, but it was a new study that just came out.
Some people can't weigh themselves, it becomes very unhealthy. The way the clothes fit is a much better marker I think.

How true, Nic! When I started with a personal trainer 5 weeks ago I gained every week, a total of 11 lbs. of muscle. I'm still going to him, but for the last two days I've been on "The Rice Diet Solution", and I've lost 5 lbs of water weight! I'm they type that really retains a lot of water weight (hormone replacement). I would actually eat some of those chips if they were low salt! Nothing wrong with guilt free goodies! I wish we had more selection of healthy, low salt foods to choose from!

I think diet foods have their place, but you have to be careful with them. I personally like salads a lot, but full fat dressings make them really calorie-laden. So I substitute a low fat dressing (I make it myself using only 2 TBSP oil per batch instead of the 1 cup that the recipe calls for). I also think it's fine to use Splenda or Stevia or whatever to sweeten things that you'd normally sweeten with sugar. Where the problems occur is mostly with snack-type foods (AKA the "naughty foods"). Most overweight people associate cookies, chips, and ice cream with guilt and sinfulness. When they see ads for fat free chips showing beautiful skinny women chowing down on them, they think "Oh, AWESOME! Now I can have cake and it's not so bad because it's LOW FAT cake!" or "I LOVE ice cream and now I can eat it because they make LOW CARB ice cream now!" I used to buy lite ice cream because I thought it was really not too bad. I ate a lot of it and gained some weight back and then realized the "low fat" ice cream I was buying only had 10 fewer calories per serving than the full-fat counterpart.

James said:
The real source of health problems are the trans fats and refined carbohydrates.

Couldn't have said it better myself. If you want to know why people are so fat these days, I can sum it up in one word: Insulin. Insulin release from eating refined carbohydrates in junk food, and the ever-popular pasta, rice, potatoes and baked goods.

Even for the people who don't live 100% on such foods (and there's quite a few, believe me) they're getting 70% of their calories from the most insulemic foods imaginable. The only time I even eat such foods is post-workout, when the muscle cells are primed to suck up all the nutrients being shuttled by the insulin release. Otherwise, it all goes into fat.

Yet, we have restaurants like Fazoli's, Noodle Factory and Big Apple Bagels... fatass farms.

There's nothing wrong with most fats, as James mentioned. Or with whole food carbohydrates. It's the laboratory creations that our bodies aren't designed to handle, the hydrogenated oils and the machine-ground and extracted endosperm of grains (pure starch).

Here is a great article titled Me, on a diet? Fat chance:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-2491892,00.html

Dr.J said:
Now, how can we find a way to get these brilliant people doing something that will help the world?[...]

I often wonder the same thing. Take, for example, gifted surgeons who spend their time trying to create eternal youth for sad old rich people, instead of saving lives.

I like the 100 calorie packs of popcorn and snacks. they work well for me.
They aren't really "diet" foods, but they let you adjust to a proper serving size.
After awhile, it seems like more than enough.

I have new research saying that artificial sweeteners are just as bad if not worse than sugar. They do cause cancer, hypothyroidism, and other illnesses. So, if you want to have a drink, drink water or unsweetened tea, or even açaí juice. So, cut down and sugar and artificial sweeteners and use natural sweeteners like xylithol or stevia.

James said:
I have new research saying that artificial sweeteners are just as bad if not worse than sugar.[...]

It turns out, when it comes to food and nutrition, it's pretty hard to outdo Nature.

Ryan said:
It turns out, when it comes to food and nutrition, it's pretty hard to outdo Nature.[...]

Couldn't have said it better myself :-)

i m very fatty
i m 25 yrs old
plz suggest me the diet which i hav to follow

thnx

I really believe that anyone wanting to live a healthier lifestyle should avoid chips, baked goods and anything processed. If you stick to raw oils, nuts and seeds, along with unprocessed foods (that means whole and natural - meat, grains, veggies and fruits)we'd all be a lot healthier.