Let’s Talk About Diets!

Yvonne Smith

Yvonne Smith

Greeter
Staff member
Diets are basically some kind of food restriction that we do to achieve some hoped for result. It might be because of a chronic illness, like diabetes or heart problems, or because of pain from inflammation in the body, or just to lose weight.
This thread is for any and all kinds of diet discussion.

Some diets limit food intake, either by amount (calorie restriction), or by when you can eat (intermittent fasting). Some limit the types of food you can eat, such as low carb/keto, carnivore, vegetarian, or vegan.
Almost all diets allow vegetables and other natural foods, but most restrict processed foods, which is defined as something that comes in a can, box, or other container, and is not in its natural state.
They all seem to have website and books promoting why they are beneficial to our health, even though they all differ in how they function in the body. It seems that each person just needs to find the WOE (Way Of Eating) that works best for them.
We are all different and have different needs.

I think that I have pretty much tried most of these diets at one time or another in my life, and I vacillate back and forth with trying to determine which WOE is actually best for me.
I have been doing a basic low carb diet, but gained weight over the cold winter months anyway; so I have flipped gears and now doing Dr. McDougall’s Starch Solution diet, which is vegan, low fat and lots of vegetables and some starches and fruits.
 
I went on my first diet when I was 15. I have gained and lost enough weight in my lifetime, to be myself 2 1/2 times. I have been on several different types of diets and while they help lose weight, they didn’t do a darn thing to help keep it off.

I have lost my appetite after my third concussion that split my head wide open in March 2024. I have done a lot of credible reading as to why I have lost my appetite and got several answers.

(1). the concussion could have altered something.
(2). stress from caring for my husband during that exact same timeframe and losing him to cancer.
(3). Three just plain old age could also be a contributing factor.

At this juncture of my life, I have lost weight, not by changing the food I eat, but just by eating a whole lot less. I do have to watch my diet to some degree because I have high blood pressure and my cholesterol tends to be a little bit on the high side.

For now, what seems to work best for me is just not eating as much of anything that I want to eat. Plus, I have always taken a lot of vitamins and will continue to take vitamins. Just not the popular flavor of the month that the whole world thinks everybody should take. I take what I think I need for the period of life that I am in. What worked for me 20 years ago isn’t going to work for me today.

People should not do the bobbing Dog head and say if that’s good for you, I will try it too because we all have different chemistry and metabolism.🤠
 
Connie Bennett said:
I went on my first diet when I was 15. I have gained and lost enough weight in my lifetime, to be myself 2 1/2 times. I have been on several different types of diets and while they help lose weight, they didn’t do a darn thing to help keep it off.

I have lost my appetite after my third concussion that split my head wide open in March 2024. I have done a lot of credible reading as to why I have lost my appetite and got several answers.

(1). the concussion could have altered something.
(2). stress from caring for my husband during that exact same timeframe and losing him to cancer.
(3). Three just plain old age could also be a contributing factor.

At this juncture of my life, I have lost weight, not by changing the food I eat, but just by eating a whole lot less. I do have to watch my diet to some degree because I have high blood pressure and my cholesterol tends to be a little bit on the high side.

For now, what seems to work best for me is just not eating as much of anything that I want to eat. Plus, I have always taken a lot of vitamins and will continue to take vitamins. Just not the popular flavor of the month that the whole world thinks everybody should take. I take what I think I need for the period of life that I am in. What worked for me 20 years ago isn’t going to work for me today.

People should not do the bobbing Dog head and say if that’s good for you, I will try it too because we all have different chemistry and metabolism.🤠
Click to expand...

I'm sorry about your loss and can't imagine how hurtful that is.
 
Connie Bennett said:
I went on my first diet when I was 15. I have gained and lost enough weight in my lifetime, to be myself 2 1/2 times. I have been on several different types of diets and while they help lose weight, they didn’t do a darn thing to help keep it off.

I have lost my appetite after my third concussion that split my head wide open in March 2024. I have done a lot of credible reading as to why I have lost my appetite and got several answers.

(1). the concussion could have altered something.
(2). stress from caring for my husband during that exact same timeframe and losing him to cancer.
(3). Three just plain old age could also be a contributing factor.

At this juncture of my life, I have lost weight, not by changing the food I eat, but just by eating a whole lot less. I do have to watch my diet to some degree because I have high blood pressure and my cholesterol tends to be a little bit on the high side.

For now, what seems to work best for me is just not eating as much of anything that I want to eat. Plus, I have always taken a lot of vitamins and will continue to take vitamins. Just not the popular flavor of the month that the whole world thinks everybody should take. I take what I think I need for the period of life that I am in. What worked for me 20 years ago isn’t going to work for me today.

People should not do the bobbing Dog head and say if that’s good for you, I will try it too because we all have different chemistry and metabolism.🤠
Click to expand...
I think that lot of people watch their diet for medical reasons, @Connie Bennett , and I think it is an important thing to do. There are foods that aggravate blood pressure and other foods that help keep it lower , in a normal range.
I think that pain is one of the main reasons to choose a diet. Inflammmatory foods cause inflammation in our body, like arthritis, joint pain, and gout, so avoiding those foods helps a lot.
I know that I can really tell the difference when I eat foods that cause inflammation, and then I am hobbling around the house, or using my walker.

Now that spring is here, and I want to be more active, it is time to make those important changes so I can be outside and play in the yard and garden again. So, I am banishing the inflammation and pain, as best as I can do.
As you mentioned, I have also been on and off of diets since I was a teenager, but I used to be a lot more active. I would walk several miles in the evenings, ride my horse on trail rides, and just did a lot of work around the yard and taking care of livestock, so that helped me stay a lot healthier..
 
I have discovered that I simply can't eat the way I used to because I don't move the way I used to. I've always been very active so getting older has been an eye-opener as far as the decline in my physical abilities. I still love to cook but neither my husband nor I eat as much as we use to.

Currently my focus isn't on my weight but is on trying to eat better to help reduce inflammation in my body. I have a slight loss of kidney function so I'm not supposed to take NSAIDS for the (many) inflammatory issues I have.

I am not on any particular "diet," but I am reducing sweets and other processed foods, drinking more water, and trying to increase my activity level. I'll see how this goes.
 
I have tried several weight loss diets, including a couple that I have made up, and they all seem to work great for a few months, but then stagnate as slower weight loss affects motivation. For weight loss, starting out with a 4-day fast, followed by a period of broth and light soups, before getting into the formal part of the diet, gives me a major boost in weight loss, which carries the motivation part forward. But at some point, even when I am following the diet plan rigidly, it will get to a point where I still have weight to lose but I'm losing only 3 pounds in a week, then gaining two back the following week, and that's when motivation becomes difficult. In the end, a diet without exercise is doomed to failure but, even so, you eventually reach a point where the weight loss slows, and this occurs long before you've reached your weight goal.

Currently, and for the rest of my life, however long that may be, I am on a low-residual diet, which means that I am supposed to only eat things that digest fully or mostly, reducing the amount that has to come out of the other end. However, everything I read about low-residual diets suggest that no one should stay on that kind of a diet for a long period of time so, given that I wouldn't mind the rest of my life being a long period of time, I do add small portions of healthier foods to my diet, arguing that, because I'm nearly 75, my doctors have assumed that the rest of my life won't be "a long period of time," while I object to that. On the more positive side, I don't think I'll ever tire of fish and chicken, and they are included in a low-residual diet.
 
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I probably felt the best when I was on an ovo-lacto vegetarian diet many years ago. My wife and I were on it for several years when we first married. Of course, we were very active then. We left that diet when we decided to have children as I didn't think it would be easy maintaining folate and other levels when my wife was carrying children. We added beef at that time from a farm that raised natural beef.
 
Yvonne Smith said:
I think that lot of people watch their diet for medical reasons, @Connie Bennett , and I think it is an important thing to do. There are foods that aggravate blood pressure and other foods that help keep it lower , in a normal range.
I think that pain is one of the main reasons to choose a diet. Inflammmatory foods cause inflammation in our body, like arthritis, joint pain, and gout, so avoiding those foods helps a lot.
I know that I can really tell the difference when I eat foods that cause inflammation, and then I am hobbling around the house, or using my walker.

Now that spring is here, and I want to be more active, it is time to make those important changes so I can be outside and play in the yard and garden again. So, I am banishing the inflammation and pain, as best as I can do.
As you mentioned, I have also been on and off of diets since I was a teenager, but I used to be a lot more active. I would walk several miles in the evenings, ride my horse on trail rides, and just did a lot of work around the yard and taking care of livestock, so that helped me stay a lot healthier..
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Ditto all of that. I should qualify what I still eat by saying there’s quite a bit I can no longer eat, that I blame on this last concussion & the stress of simultaneously caring for my husband.

I would still eat inflammatory-type foods were it not for that, but most of that type of food doesn’t taste near as good as it used to.
 
I don’t stick to a diet as such , just keep carbs in mind in daily … when I went in the diet years ago to loose weight , I went shopping for a plate
to use that’s was in between a huge dinner plate ( we were both using ) and entree size plate 🍽️ but I couldn’t find one I fact dinner plates seemed to be be getter bigger then , most were 28~ 30 cm , so started using the entree size which is 22 cm and I’ve been using the same plates ever since , when I first started using the small plate I felt hungry just looking at the size of the plate , I feel it make a difference to how much you eat by simply using a smaller plate

Now days we only eat 2 meals a day as we feel way to full if we eat at lunch time as well ,

while we was in Queensland in Feb we only ate one meal a day due to having a big breakfast at the resort where we was staying ,we always had a few little tubs of yoghurt in the fridge if we felt like a snack latter in the day
I find yoghurt more filling / satisfying than a slice of toast ( plain Greek yoghurt, which I’ll add equal to one full apricot to ( preserved )
and I have at times added a light sprinkle of light breakfast cereal on top
 
I just eat right and exercise.

When I had a heart attack back in 2017, I tipped the scales at 248. I smoked, had horrible eating habits, horrible sleeping habits, didn't exercise at all, and my blood type might as well have been mayo.

That heart attack? I got the big picture right away. Six stents will make you sit up and take notice.

Stopped smoking and started eating right. Walking, believe it or not, is in fact, exercise. LOL.

Now I hover around 207, blood pressure stays between 115-130. I go to the gym 4-5 times a week, without fail. Even if I don't feel like it, if I just go and walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes, at least I did something.

You can have a slice of pizza or a cheeseburger every once in a while. Just make it a treat, not a lifestyle. I had a candy bar the other day, but other than that, I can't remember the last time I had something purely decadent.

There's a certain mindset that goes along with it. Don't eat until you're full. That's overeating. You eat your plateful, and go back for seconds without really thinking. Am I still hungry? The answer is probably no. But you get that second plateful because you're not full.

So, anyway, dieting, I guess, for me, is just watching what I put into my body.
 
What an interesting thread. I agree with so much here. I was also a teen for my first diet experience. I weighed 115, but my best friend weighed 110 so I had to be fat right? I think that's what started my whole weight problem, I lost that five pounds in five days, because I was young, then was ravenous, because I was young -- and so I learned to binge.

Luckily I've always liked to exercise. I jogged, jumped rope every day for many years, took ballet classes into my fifties, loved all those Richard Simmons and Leslie Sansone videos, but I also loved to eat and I don't think I could ever make up for that with enough exercise.

These days I no longer really care much about how I look, but I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to walk much anymore, if I don't lose some weight and control the inflammation in my joints.
 
Andie White said:
What an interesting thread. I agree with so much here. I was also a teen for my first diet experience. I weighed 115, but my best friend weighed 110 so I had to be fat right? I think that's what started my whole weight problem, I lost that five pounds in five days, because I was young, then was ravenous, because I was young -- and so I learned to binge.

Luckily I've always liked to exercise. I jogged, jumped rope every day for many years, took ballet classes into my fifties, loved all those Richard Simmons and Leslie Sansone videos, but I also loved to eat and I don't think I could ever make up for that with enough exercise.

These days I no longer really care much about how I look, but I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to walk much anymore, if I don't lose some weight and control the inflammation in my joints.
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Yes, the inflammation really does a number on being able to enjoy doing things, and makes walking harder. Over winter, it was cold, and we were mostly in the house, and I spent a lot of time bundled up in a blanket in my recliner.
Now, I want to be outside before it gets too hot, and my body is wearing out much too fast; so it was time for me to make a radical change, cut out the junk food and try to be more “walkable” again.
 
Andie White said:
What an interesting thread. I agree with so much here. I was also a teen for my first diet experience. I weighed 115, but my best friend weighed 110 so I had to be fat right? I think that's what started my whole weight problem, I lost that five pounds in five days, because I was young, then was ravenous, because I was young -- and so I learned to binge.

Luckily I've always liked to exercise. I jogged, jumped rope every day for many years, took ballet classes into my fifties, loved all those Richard Simmons and Leslie Sansone videos, but I also loved to eat and I don't think I could ever make up for that with enough exercise.

These days I no longer really care much about how I look, but I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to walk much anymore, if I don't lose some weight and control the inflammation in my joints.
Click to expand...
Andie I'm sure you'll get back to it soon, I like to jack up the music and dance [if thats what you wanna call it].
I hope to get back soon as I'm able.
 
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