Fad Diets

[Sydnie]

So... given we're all here because we're sick of fad diets and all of the myths of losing weight. I'm sure most of us have tried fad diets and ellipticals to lose weight but it seemed to find us again. What did you try?

I can not so proudly say I have done:

Weight watchers

Diet pills with lots of running. (Shin splints put a hindrance on that)

& last but not least... the one I'm least proud of: HcG. Yes.. I used to inject myself with hormones and eat 500 calories a day to lose weight. It worked...Ish. I lost 30 lbs within a month but felt like crap, was exhausted all of the time, my brain malfunctioned, and as soon as I started eating like a human again I gained it all back. That, and it was expensive. >.< What was I thinking?

So, I've fessed up. What about you?

[ETFnerd]

when i was in high school I ate nothing but potato chips for two months... was delish for a while... didn't want to eat potato chips for a while afterwards... had fewer bad effects from it than i expected... my body was more resilient back then...

[Hammlin]

Pills and Atkins, and gained it all plus about 50 more back. Sigh. Apparently you can't just eat meats and cheese, you need veggies or something like that....

[UncleTone]

Man, this is one of those lay it all out threads. Here is what I have tried, and had no success for one reason or another (hopefully I have the stick-with-it's and actually lose the weight and learn how to live healthy this go round with you awesome people here).

Weight Watchers (I actually liked them, had a good leader that promoted eating lots of fruits and veggies etc, but I just could not see it as a long term sustainable option, and there was enough of the eat whatever attitude but stay in the points that it turned me off a bit)

Atkins

Cabbage Soup Diet

Cookie Diet (whhhhaaaaa? Sounds good but was absolutely disgusting)

Low carb, low fat, low calorie diet

"Heart Diet" (this one was odd, it had me eating like 6 crackers and a 1/2 can of tuna for one meal, half a grapefruit and black coffee for another meal, some cottage cheese and broccoli for dinner. As you can imagine I lasted about 2 days on this and felt like crap with major headaches)

Those are all I can think of, but I am sure there are more. The crap I put myself through but that is all long gone!

[oystergirl]

A few years ago a girlfriend of mine who I hadn't seen in a long time and who used to be very heavy came to visit me. She was thin as heck, but she also wore a ton of makeup to cover up very bad skin which she hadn't had when we were in college. She was on the homeopathic HCG program. she talked me into it and i did try it for all of 1 week. I felt like such crap I gave it up--no injections, just drops, but that 500 calorie with konjack noodles was so disgusting I kind of just threw up in my mouth thinking about it.

[LeoDiablo2]

Let's see..

Nothing to be ashamed with what fad diets we have tried in the past. We learned from it!

Weight Watchers: I tried this for a while but never felt good especially when I was eating whole wheat pasta, pasta of any kind, oatmeals, grains hence is why I decided to try Paleo in the past and I felt better on it. Fell off the track for a while now I'm back on it.

Atkins: Tried that in college, wasn't easy to eat everything in very low carbs, got tired all the time but I did lose 30 pounds on it and quickly gained it all back!

I tried eating 1,000 calories a day, it worked for the first week, losing 5 pounds while exercising. BUt that didn't last!

[JPanda]

A few years ago I went through a phase (3~4 months) where if I felt really guilty about eating something I probably should have stayed away from (buffet, 8 slices of pizza, brekkie from McD's or BK) I would purge. Yeah, I got to a point where I would plan on getting some hashbrowns and a croissant sandwich, just to throw it up afterwards. I realized how disgusting it had gotten, so I stopped.

[Waldo]

My wife convinced me to do one of those cleanse things once with her. Fasting and drinking only cayenne and lemon water. Lasted all of a like 2 days, it really, really sucked.

It was odd that we did that since my wife is so anti-fad diet. She's done the weight watchers thing to varying degrees over the years. I wouldn't really consider weight watchers a fad diet, it is more like calorie counting for dummies with a support group.

My 2nd year of college my body completely rejected dorm food. I could barely get it down, and it came up way too frequently. I often skipped eating entirely or just ate salads. Not even a strong case of the munchies after fun at 4:20 could help the situation. Basically lived off of delivery pizza.

(This thread is rather ironic though here on NF.....)

[Naturally]

Weight watchers

Atkins (for, like 3 days until the novelty of bacon and cheese for every meal with nothing else wore off)

Slim-fast

Slimming world - I actually got to target weight on this, but then it went back on. So back I went. Lost a bit, gained more. Lost a bit, gained more. Etcetera etcetera. Whilst I believe that the principal of not restricting your intake of low energy density foods is good in terms of reaching satiety before you'd reached your calorie allowance, it also inadvertently promoted weird cheats, like using cous cous to make a cake and then eating the whole thing, using artifical sweeteners, weird fat sprays like fry-light with 100s of ingredients and additives and so on. I followed the green days mostly, and its legacy with me is that I am trying to unlearn the things it taught me, namely;

a) Its okay to eat until you're stuffed, then eat some more, provided its "free foods."

That a mainly carbohydrate based diet low in protein was good for you. For me, when Atkins was all the rage I was smug because I lost all my weight eating almost 100% carbs. That meant I ate pasta for breakfast, a huge jacket potato with baked beans for lunch, and rice for tea. Stupid thing is, I ate that and lost weight. How, I'll never know. Well, I guess it was because of a negative energy balance, but I dread to think about my poor insulin.

c) That it was 99% what you eat, not how much you eat of it... in the extreme. To eat just in case you got hungry. To eat when you are bored, because its "free" foods. to eat pre-packaged flavoured rice and pasta, because they were low in "syns". That all non-free food was a "syn" - alledgedly re-named to read "synergy" rather than sin, but it still felt like sin. I would cook up a packet of pasta n sauce and add a tin of peas, and have that as a snack. Same with smash and a tin of spaghetti in tomato sauce.

[Mickie]

Weight Watchers (I actually liked them, had a good leader that promoted eating lots of fruits and veggies etc, but I just could not see it as a long term sustainable option, and there was enough of the eat whatever attitude but stay in the points that it turned me off a bit)

Exactly this. The people there weren't all that concerned about being healthy as much as they were about what the number on the scale said that week, which translated to "I can eat all the junk I want as long as I stay under such and such calories/points". I was definitely one of those people at the time, and ended up getting anorexic because of it without even noticing. Thank God that stage of life is past.

But yeah, WeightWatchers was pretty much it for me. I didn't care about dieting or losing weight before that.

My dad, on the other hand, is all about the fad diets, no matter how much I try to tell him it's unhealthy. He's done Atkins, Cabbage Soup Diet, Eat-Nothing-But-Soup-And-Salad (currently doing that), and is also currently taking Hydroxycut no matter how much I beg him not to. He keeps saying, "I just want to lose 4 more pounds, and then I'll start eating whatever you want me to eat, I promise." But I know that when he starts eating the food I suggest, he'll gain a couple pounds back and first, and it'll scare him into taking the awful stuff again. Ugh. I don't know what to do about that.

[shutterpillar]

I'm sure most of us have tried fad diets and ellipticals to lose weight

Hey now, I still use an elliptical in the winter every now and then when I cant run or it gets dark out at like, 5:00pm. (my husband gets home at 5:30 and he has the car all day, i've got kids to watch, so my only time to run is in the evening and I dont want to go in the dark by myself)

I hate using it because its boring as hell and I know its not the most "super awesome" thing to do, but its something. It especially helps my husband, who SO DESPERATELY wants to run, but cant because he's got pretty severe arthritis. The elliptical is better for his joints, and its better than him sitting around moping and coding on his computer all night. (plus i've got him doing bodyweight training, so yay!)

So even though it gets a bad rep... I am all for the elliptical for myself (sometimes) and my husband.

As for bad things I wish I hadn't done.... I think just TONS and TONS of cardio to lose weight in the beginning. My heart was getting strong, but the rest of me wasn't. I was a healthy weight, but I sure didn't look good naked. lol.

Another thing I would do is count my calories, but eat the most unhealthy things I could get my hands on. Sure, I was under on my calories, but I was also still extremely hungry and malnourished.

Idiot I was. that's for sure.

[aj_rock]

Ehn, ellipticals are actually good if joint wear/tear is a cause for concern; much lower impact than running.

Myself, the only real negative thing I've personally tried is the EC stack... sure it technically works but its a) not long-term and will wreck havoc on your psyche.

[Sydnie]

I didn't mean anything against people who use ellipticals along with other things or because they can't run, I just used it in lieu of the "only cardio cause I don't wanna look like a bodybuilder eeek!" people. I didn't mean to offend anyone. I just sometimes think I'm clever when I'm not.

[aj_rock]

I didn't mean anything against people who use ellipticals along with other things or because they can't run, I just used it in lieu of the "only cardio cause I don't wanna look like a bodybuilder eeek!" people. I didn't mean to offend anyone. I just sometimes think I'm clever when I'm not.

No one's offended madam amirite shutta?

[guest439437484421]

I can happily say that I've never been on a fad diet. The closest I think I ever came was when my mom got me on thyroid medication (to, uh, speed up my metabolism?), which I quickly stopped taking because I really don't believe in taking many drugs (save maybe the occasional tylenol).

[Corbab]

I got through all my diet fads in one fell swoop. There was a period of about 8 months where I tried to eat as little as possible, and avoided bread and fats like the plague. I ended up dropping to around 180lb (healthy at 200 now) and I had no energy for the entirety of that endeavor. Then I found slow-carb, which worked alright but still left me without any real results. Now I'm fully paleo and I've never felt or looked better.

[UncleTone]

I got through all my diet fads in one fell swoop. There was a period of about 8 months where I tried to eat as little as possible, and avoided bread and fats like the plague. I ended up dropping to around 180lb (healthy at 200 now) and I had no energy for the entirety of that endeavor. Then I found slow-carb, which worked alright but still left me without any real results. Now I'm fully paleo and I've never felt or looked better.

I am beginning to think that full paleo/primal is the way for me to go. I am currently trying to transition to that and figure out how to get away from all of the bread and pasta etc. I come from a big Italian family that eats a ton of pasta, but I think the recipe Steve posted a few days ago for Paleo spaghetti will be a huge help.

[Philociraptor]

I did vegetarian one time for lent. It was painful, in both the missing my usual foods and how I felt while on it.

[saretta]

Can't say I have ever done any fad diets except that I eat gluten and lactose free, but that's because I am gluten and lactose intolerant. Recently I am eating Paleo, is that considered a fad? It just seems like gluten and lactose free to the nth potential to me. I feel good on it!