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Personally, I have to have clear, simple, and hard-edged rules when it comes to my eating diet. If I give myself any wiggle room, I find myself wiggling more an

by Sukotto 16y ago

Personally, I have to have clear, simple, and hard-edged rules when it comes to my eating diet. If I give myself any wiggle room, I find myself wiggling more and more until I'm back where I started. I've had great success cutting back on junk by following Reinhard Engels' "No S" diet. http://nosdiet.com/ http://nosdiet.com/ No Snacks No Sweets No Seconds Except, sometimes, on "S" days (Where "S Day" is defined as "Saturday, Sunday, or special cultural or religious event) -- If that doesn't work for you, here are some other hacks I or people I know have used with success. - remove all junk food from your home - don't buy any when you go grocery shopping - stop hanging out places where there are a lot of snacks - Set up a Seinfeld chain http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-se... (Personally I use http://joesgoals.com http://joesgoals.com and keep a chart widget on my igoogle page) - if you simply must snack... then figure out what snacks are compatible with your diet and put them on the top shelf of your fridge and in the deli drawer... the first place you look for a snack when you open the door. - tell all your friends that if they catch you eating junk food then you will give them $1,000 (or some other painfully large amount). (Just remember Inspector Clouseau and make sure you have a halting condition) - if your friends try to sabotage you then drop those jerks. It's not funny, it's not "a joke"... it's getting backstabbed by someone you thought you could trust. Life's too short to put up with that shit

niels_olson 16y ago
As a doc, glad to see some people in the community thinking right about this. This is overall pretty good advice. I would add the best snacks are nuts and cheese, or other high-fat, high-protein, low carbohydrate foods. I like the idea of a chart widget. I would avoid most bread, including flat breads and crackers. The occasional tortilla for a wrap is ok. I would definitely avoid rice, pasta, and potatoes. If you eat sushi, consider sashimi. Don't ask your spouse to provide the negative feedback, ambivalent co-workers might be best.
- gaoshan 16y ago
  >I would definitely avoid rice... Ever live in a Chinese household? If rice is so bad why do so many of the hundreds of millions of people who eat it 2 or even 3 times a day remain skinny and trim (Rice. Not the things that can go with it, not the ways it can be prepared or abused... just rice)? This is such a non-starter I don't even know where to... start.
  - mitjak 16y ago
    While the whole "people did it for ages" argument never works I must admit I'm rather puzzled how one would give up potatoes, rice _and_ bread. How exactly are they evil? What is so dangerous about carbs? Aren't snacks to blame? In a typical Russian home one of which I grew up it's a loaf a day or more. Italians and French eat even more bread. And as the OO mentioned, Asian nations consume unimaginable amounts of rice. Yet America remains one of the most overweight nations. It just seems to me like it's a mosquito bite and you're asking to chop off the arm.
    - niels_olson 16y ago
      1) glycemic index 2) the unbelievable number of calories you can get before triggering a satiety signal 3) the social norm of scientifically huge portions. My wife and I have gotten the point of ordering a single entree and splitting it, sometimes we can get away with a single appetizer. 4) Two billion people in Asia do eat a lot of rice. They also do more physical work and probably don't eat as much rice per serving as Americans. 5) I should also add corn to the list.
      - mitjak 16y ago
        Of all these, the universal problem is only number one, and still only due to the amounts of food. Portion sizes have nothing to do with carbs being evil on their own, and are definitely something one can restrain self on. Anything in large amounts is detrimental.
  - larsberg 16y ago
    Because Chinese people (at least the skinny+trim ones) have a single, small bowl of rice and eat tons of veggies and then a few pieces of meat. Not the Amero-Chinese style half-plate of rice with a heaping of fatty meat cut, slathered in some sauce composed of half-salt half-cooking oil, with a few veggies thrown in for "color."
- makmanalp 16y ago
  Why is high fat, high protein, low carbohydrate better? Aren't fats a sort of "permanent storage" whereas carbohydrates are more likely to be used instantly and then stored if there is extra?
  - niels_olson 16y ago
    Consumed fats induce a broad range of hormonal satiety signals, so your total caloric consumption is often less. The French and Mediterranean countries are famous for a few things, two being healthy living and high fat diets (butter in France, olive oil in the Med). Know any fat French people? Butter is not the problem. Carbs are rapidly burned, or rapidly converted to fat. Fat in the blood stream can still be metabolized, what's especially hard is liberating fat from adipocytes once it's in them. Among carbs, fructose is a particularly nasty problem. Fructose entirely bypasses the insulin pathway, which is the only major inhibitory signals for monosaccharides, but is is easily converted to fat, and there's some evidence it induces some inflammatory markers along the way. Observational studies of my two kids suggest they could eat oranges or candy all day without pause. Here's a little experiment: pick a day where you're not going to be exposed to huge external stimuli to eat (eg, it's not the company picnic day). Weigh out 3 oz of unsalted nuts and 3 oz of cooked rice. Eat the rice for breakfast. Time yourself until you're hungry for those nuts. Eat the nuts. All of them. Time yourself until you're hungry again. I'll bet you make it past lunch. Eat 3 more ounces of nuts. You'll probably make it until dinner.
    - nkurz 16y ago
      I'm pretty skeptical of traditional calorie counting, but wouldn't your experiment be simply explained by the 5x difference in caloric content between the two? http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+oz+walnuts http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+oz+walnuts http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+oz+white+rice http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+oz+white+rice Wouldn't it be more fair to compare equal calories rather than equal weights? I'd have to guess that eating 15 oz of rice might have a significant appetite suppressing effect as well. Or maybe I'm not understanding the point of the experiment. Are you simply suggesting that by eating a strangely distributed 1200 calories you can 'make it until dinner'? :)
benatkin 16y ago
Thanks for the links! I had seen the NoS diet before, but forgot about it. I hadn't seen Joe's Goals before. I was impressed and I created an account. While I was looking around, I noticed that Reinhard Engels has his own information tool for keeping track of things like the NoS diet: http://www.everydaysystems.com/habitcal/ http://www.everydaysystems.com/habitcal/ I also find his alcohol "glass ceiling" interesting, and it looks to me like habitcal is better suited for tracking things like that than Joe's Goals, though Joe's Goals has a nicer UI and seems better to me for tracking things like the NoS diet.

by Sukotto 16y ago

niels_olson 16y ago

As a doc, glad to see some people in the community thinking right about this. This is overall pretty good advice. I would add the best snacks are nuts and cheese, or other high-fat, high-protein, low carbohydrate foods. I like the idea of a chart widget. I would avoid most bread, including flat breads and crackers. The occasional tortilla for a wrap is ok. I would definitely avoid rice, pasta, and potatoes. If you eat sushi, consider sashimi. Don't ask your spouse to provide the negative feedback, ambivalent co-workers might be best.

gaoshan 16y ago
>I would definitely avoid rice... Ever live in a Chinese household? If rice is so bad why do so many of the hundreds of millions of people who eat it 2 or even 3 times a day remain skinny and trim (Rice. Not the things that can go with it, not the ways it can be prepared or abused... just rice)? This is such a non-starter I don't even know where to... start.
- mitjak 16y ago
  While the whole "people did it for ages" argument never works I must admit I'm rather puzzled how one would give up potatoes, rice _and_ bread. How exactly are they evil? What is so dangerous about carbs? Aren't snacks to blame? In a typical Russian home one of which I grew up it's a loaf a day or more. Italians and French eat even more bread. And as the OO mentioned, Asian nations consume unimaginable amounts of rice. Yet America remains one of the most overweight nations. It just seems to me like it's a mosquito bite and you're asking to chop off the arm.
  - niels_olson 16y ago
    1) glycemic index 2) the unbelievable number of calories you can get before triggering a satiety signal 3) the social norm of scientifically huge portions. My wife and I have gotten the point of ordering a single entree and splitting it, sometimes we can get away with a single appetizer. 4) Two billion people in Asia do eat a lot of rice. They also do more physical work and probably don't eat as much rice per serving as Americans. 5) I should also add corn to the list.
    - mitjak 16y ago
      Of all these, the universal problem is only number one, and still only due to the amounts of food. Portion sizes have nothing to do with carbs being evil on their own, and are definitely something one can restrain self on. Anything in large amounts is detrimental.
- larsberg 16y ago
  Because Chinese people (at least the skinny+trim ones) have a single, small bowl of rice and eat tons of veggies and then a few pieces of meat. Not the Amero-Chinese style half-plate of rice with a heaping of fatty meat cut, slathered in some sauce composed of half-salt half-cooking oil, with a few veggies thrown in for "color."
makmanalp 16y ago
Why is high fat, high protein, low carbohydrate better? Aren't fats a sort of "permanent storage" whereas carbohydrates are more likely to be used instantly and then stored if there is extra?
- niels_olson 16y ago
  Consumed fats induce a broad range of hormonal satiety signals, so your total caloric consumption is often less. The French and Mediterranean countries are famous for a few things, two being healthy living and high fat diets (butter in France, olive oil in the Med). Know any fat French people? Butter is not the problem. Carbs are rapidly burned, or rapidly converted to fat. Fat in the blood stream can still be metabolized, what's especially hard is liberating fat from adipocytes once it's in them. Among carbs, fructose is a particularly nasty problem. Fructose entirely bypasses the insulin pathway, which is the only major inhibitory signals for monosaccharides, but is is easily converted to fat, and there's some evidence it induces some inflammatory markers along the way. Observational studies of my two kids suggest they could eat oranges or candy all day without pause. Here's a little experiment: pick a day where you're not going to be exposed to huge external stimuli to eat (eg, it's not the company picnic day). Weigh out 3 oz of unsalted nuts and 3 oz of cooked rice. Eat the rice for breakfast. Time yourself until you're hungry for those nuts. Eat the nuts. All of them. Time yourself until you're hungry again. I'll bet you make it past lunch. Eat 3 more ounces of nuts. You'll probably make it until dinner.
  - nkurz 16y ago
    I'm pretty skeptical of traditional calorie counting, but wouldn't your experiment be simply explained by the 5x difference in caloric content between the two? http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+oz+walnuts http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+oz+walnuts http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+oz+white+rice http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+oz+white+rice Wouldn't it be more fair to compare equal calories rather than equal weights? I'd have to guess that eating 15 oz of rice might have a significant appetite suppressing effect as well. Or maybe I'm not understanding the point of the experiment. Are you simply suggesting that by eating a strangely distributed 1200 calories you can 'make it until dinner'? :)

benatkin 16y ago

Thanks for the links! I had seen the NoS diet before, but forgot about it. I hadn't seen Joe's Goals before. I was impressed and I created an account. While I was looking around, I noticed that Reinhard Engels has his own information tool for keeping track of things like the NoS diet: http://www.everydaysystems.com/habitcal/ http://www.everydaysystems.com/habitcal/ I also find his alcohol "glass ceiling" interesting, and it looks to me like habitcal is better suited for tracking things like that than Joe's Goals, though Joe's Goals has a nicer UI and seems better to me for tracking things like the NoS diet.