Are these people pulling my leg? page 3

[PoppaCap]

I like!!

Yep - I'm stealing that quote from counterpuncher

[Iron Fireling]

There's no point criticising people who are doing the best they can with the information they've got. People have been taught literally ALL THEIR LIVES that to lose weight they have to cut fat, eat whole grains, get heaps of exercise etc. etc. If they're not given information to the contrary, they'll keep doing it.

For a looong time I believed that "fat makes you fat" and that I needed to eat a high carb low fat diet! I was WRONG, obviously. But if I didn't read so much and research so much, I may never have found my way here.

My sister is still following a CW diet, and while I've told her that I "don't eat grains and sugar" she still goes with the "everything in moderation" approach. I argue with my highly intelligent parents about statins... my dad with his Ph.D in organic chemistry who thinks he has to quit eating grapefruit (which he has had EVERY DAY as long as I've known him until now) because it interferes with his statins! He's terrified of losing his faculties, but the STATINS will do that to him (as I've said) and yet, his fear of not being on them (or of believing that maybe I'm right and his doctors are wrong) won't let him do anything different. Very sad!

These are NOT stupid people. They've got high IQs, they're well educated... they're just... brainwashed by CW. I do hope my own results will spur them on to make a change (my diet is certainly less expensive than my sister's pre-packaged Lite n' Easy diet)... but odds are they'll think it's just another "fad diet".

[Baloo]

Everything in moderation wouldn't be too bad actually, it's just the diet prescribed by the government (UK and from what I've seen US) isn't everything in moderation.

[MissJecka]

As a recovering obsessive Calorie-counter and runner, I've been there.

When training for my first 10k, 15k, and even my one and only (ever!) half-marathon, I was cutting Calories to lose weight, eating what a website recommended: 1200-1550 Calories per day. More often than not I was hovering around 1150-1200 and burning at least 300 Calories/day, on average. My Calorie deficit was "perfect" according to the program I was following, yet I was gaining weight rather than losing it.

It happens.

[Ingvildr]

Well, as a diabetic and hashimotos losing weight is a b****. Before the hashimotos was discovered I could only lose weight if I went below 800 calories, in fact that was partly why they checked my thyroid. The diabetes also make it very difficult to get to fat burning mode because high insulin levels keep the hormone that tells your body to burn fat turned off. Of course I couldn't sustain that few of calories more than about a week before I was climbing the walls. Now with thyroid replacement meds my maintanence calories is about 1500 and I lose weight very slowly at 1200, about 1/2 a pound a week. Am I still obese, yup but it is slowly creeping down. And I am one of the people with strongly hereditary diabetes before I get chewed out for having eaten my way into diabetes(I hear it a lot). I was showing diabetic symptoms as a 115 pound 5'4" 12 year old who bicycled 2 hours a day every day.

[catholicchick]

I read everything I can get my hands on from Primal Blueprint to Primal Body Primal Mind, Make Shift Happen etc. My dad always asks why I read these types of books when I know what I have to do to lose weight, just eat less. I wish I could get him to read what I am reading. I use the books for motivation and learning and he is stuck believing what he has always believed. A damn shame!

[JackieKessler]

Women are so scared of weights. I see it a lot. I love my heavy weights. I'm 5'2" and weigh close between 129-132 lbs (which is close to the upper end for my weight range for my height), but I wear a size 4 and have a 26" waist. I wish more women would turn to weights instead of cardio when trying to lose weight/get smaller.

I was terrified of real weightlifting. That was a man thing, you know? Women aren't built that way. Etcetera.

I am so glad I'm weightlifting now. I love it. Just today, after doing back squats, I said to one of the other women there, "Lifting heavy things is COOL." I'm amazed by how strong I'm becoming. I have a long way to go, but that's OK! When I started, the most I did for back squats was 65 pounds. Today I did 105 pounds. Rah!!!

I don't care if I don't lose another pound, or even if I gain weight, as long as my lifts continue improving, and my stamina when I spar in TKD improves. Inches have been decreasing around waist and hips, so I'm psyched.

I don't want to be smaller. I want to be STRONGER.

[sbhikes]

Before I came here I was trying to eat low calorie, low fat CW healthy and I was running 3-5 miles a day (and hoping to work up to being able to go 5-10 miles a day) and hiking on weekends. I was so hungry all the time I was miserable. And despite all that running I wasn't losing any weight. I really had nothing to lose to try a high fat low carb approach. Thank goodness it worked. At least to a point. I find myself lately trying to eat smaller portions, feeling a sense of failure if I consume "too much" fat, increasing my daily slow cardio (I added riding my bike to work because the weather has been so nice, and secretly hoping it will help me lose weight despite my better understanding), and yet no weight has moved at all, except upward. I really do not understand why it works that way, why it works so opposite of how you think it should.

[Daemonized]

I'd go as far as to say that unless a person was fed precisely measured amounts of food in a lab where they were monitored and verified to have consumed all of the food in question and no additional calories then any statement about how much they consumed is a guess at best. People don't even need to be attempting mislead either. It's just very hard to track all the variables that go into feeding a biological organism. It's almost like we weren't designed as machines with verifiable input, output, and overall activity levels.

[Catrin]

Been there, done that, and brought the t-shirt home. My body was accustomed to riding my bike 80-100 miles a week, going to the gym 2-3 times a week for strength training, and all on an average calorie budget of 1,400-1,600 calories (low fat, ~200 carbs/day though more on long ride days). I was SO frustrated because my weight wouldn't move for well over a year of doing this. I just couldn't understand how I wasn't losing weight or body fat with all of that effort. Nutrition and medical professionals all were telling me I was doing the right thing and to just be patient.

Thankfully I finally found better advice when I moved to my current fitness facility and visited a new sports nutritionist - who immediately increased my calorie targets by 50%. Women are told this cr*p all of the time.

Really looking forward to seeing how going Primal will work for me, combined with my mountain biking and strength training