ExRx.net

Hi,

I recently started working out mixing cardio and strength training. I'm making good progress losing weight. But naturally, I've been reading lots of diet advice and I was wondering if anyone has advice on various diet aids.

I'm interested in something separate from food and exercise advice. I know no diet aid works without attending to food and exercise, but I was wondering whether any of the various diet aids touted works for you people and whether you are concerned about the side effects.

TIA.

I don't think any of them really do much although once you're down to getting into contest shape, some people have success with various methods. If you're not at that point, don't worry about it. Looking for the quick fix is the best way to derail your motivation. Getting into shape is a long term process. If you're not working on getting healthier for the long term, any change will be short lived. You should be looking for what works for your specific situation that you can live with as a lifestyle. Focus on eating real food, strength training, intense spurts of speed and lots of fun activities.

I've been trying to lose about 1 lb/week and I'm down 18 lbs. I'm just can't help but be curious about the diet aids because a few people volunteered information at a blog I visited. I don't want to say what they told me because it may be misinformation and I also want to discover whether it turns out his information was idiosyncratic or widely shared.

I have not been trying them. I sort of figure I know I don't want to use diet aids forever, and eating close to the way I plan to after i reach my goal is better for me. Also, my goal is not super skinny.

I think you'll be better off with your current approach. Congratulations on your progress to date.

The only diet aids that work are actual drugs. All they do is Increase your ability to mobilize fat, or just help you lose weight faster. You don't need to be on a restrictive diet or continue taking drugs to maintain a weight once you get there. You can't eat whatever you want, but if you watch the carbs you won't gain any fat.

If you are still losing weight, than just keep doing what you are doing. When it stalls out you can decrease carbs/calories. I've found that once you get under 20 carbs, reducing calories can speed things up. You can't go to low though, otherwise you will slow down your metabolism and eventually end up blowing the diet because of how hungry you get.

I've had some noticeable extra effect from taking a lot of CLA (like, 4-6 capsules of 1000mg a day) plus drinking tons of green tea (like, a liter or so a day) . . . but only when I'm already doing a very hard weight cut. The difference is small but it's there. This makes a difference when I'm cutting weight for a competition (I did MMA and I currently do submission wrestling matches), where even a few ounces of extra weight loss can mean you get into the division you want or face opponents who weighed in close to 10 pounds heavier than you.

But in general, day to day, I don't bother. The cost is high, the amount I need is high, and the "every little it helps" is undone by the fact that I'm not actually in full fat-loss mode.

Yea, CLA does work, it's very slight though. Green tea was later shown to have no effect, but oolong tea was actually shown to have a small effect. It didn't work for me though.

Thanks, stuward.

I agree with pdellorto that the diet aids I've seen are all expensive.

Ironman--
Do you mean 20 grams of carb a day? I'm sure I eat more than that for breakfast.

I don't really do low carb or high carb. I don't follow any diet plan in particular. I know what my problem was: no exercise and eating too much absolute junk too often. I cut most the junk out, and keep more snack veggies, fruit and non-fat yogurt in the house. I also use lots of non-nutritive sweetener. I don't think I could stick to the diet without that.

As long as you just eat real food and eliminate the processed food, you can get to a reasonable body composition. If (when) you stall out or want to go lower, you'll need to focus on the carbs and calories as Ironman said.

Well if you can lose weight that easily, go for it. Try just cutting out junk food and see how you do.

For now, that's what I'm doing. But I suspect my goal is a bit different from lots of the guys here who seem to have been training a while.

As far a data on the "low carb vs. high carb" debates, the non-junkfood switch is a reduction in carbs relative to the diet that got me up to BMI of 27.2. My Tanita scale reported 33% body fat, and the trainer at the gym got the same number. This site calls that bodyfat obese.http://www.healthchecksystems.com/bodyfat.htm while this one just calls it over-fat http://www.nutribase.com/fwchartf.shtml . Mind you, I don't think the average person in the street looking at would have called me obese-- but I was fat.

The junk food was mostly high calorie carb/fat bombs. For example: impulse buy doughnuts when shopping for groceries; impulse buy hershey or kit-kat bars, corn chips with salsa, buttered bread as a snack at home, pillsbury turnover while watching tv. Daytime snacks are now usually raw veggies, fruit in non-fat yogurt. So, both carbs and calories are lower.

As for carbs: I am still eating cereal with skim milk for breakfast which, by itself, puts me over the 20 grams of carbs a day. I still sometimes eat ham, tuna or chicken sandwiches using honest to goodness bread for lunch. I use some carbs in recipes-- for example, I prepare things like peppers stuffed with a sort of veggie-wholewheat cous-cous- meat-loaf left over from the night before. I still drink hot-chocolate made with skim milk on colder evenings, or drink smoothies with dairy on warmer ones. So, that's 11 g or so of carbs there. I've have no potatoes, bread, rice or mainly carb side dish on roughly 3 dinners a week, but some dinners are carb heavy. About 1 night a week I eat pasta. I love that-- I'm not going to give it up forever. One dinner a week is are bean-with meat dishes (but the no bread.) Friday's I often go out for pizza but make sure I don't pig out. Ordering a salad before helps.

I plan my meals to make cooking and grocery shopping more efficient. I've checked the balance of a weeks diet and I'd say I'm it's 'medium' carb. It's got more protein than I'd get following the food pyramid which has such small portions of meat. But it's got way more carb than anything people call low carb. The milk and non-fat yogurt alone push me over 20 grams of carbs a day.

Doing this my BMI is down to 23.5. It was 22 when I was in my 20s. I don't really have health reasons to get that low, so I think I might aim for 22.5 now and the scale says 26% body fat. One of the sites I linked suggest a 21-24% is a fit level of body fat; the other one suggests 22-25% as normal. So, I think I'm going to celebrate when the scale reports 24% bodyfat averaged over the week.

I suspect I can get there without doing anything drastic. After that, I'm going to focus on strength building and keeping weight stable, for at least 3 months. Provided I don't develop some sort of body dysmorphia, I think I'll be pretty happy at that weight.

I'm suspicious that CLA and Omega 3 may be helpful for me. (Weight fluctuation introduces too much noise to be conclusive.)

Look for healthy sources of meat and fish and these are easy to get from your diet. The wilder the better.

Yeah, I do - I try to get as much as possible from non-supplement forms as well. I even buy the O-3 eggs.

Yea, you can't loose weight eating cereal and that sort of thing. You also need to drive the fat=bad thing out of your mind. That was based on very flawed research, junk science in fact.


Oh and BTW, you get those errors when you try to upload a picture, I'm not sure what's wrong and I don't care enough to sink a lot of time into troubleshooting it. You can link them over though.

Don't post stuff like that in announcements. In fact, most of the time, you shouldn't even start a topic in there. Very little reason to do so.

Butts probably are not your best choice for an avatar. You might want to try something else.